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I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.? 

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Our Household Pet. 







J. HENDRICKSON M'CARTY, D. D., 

Author of "Black Horse and Carryall." 



A little child shall lead them. — Isaiah. 

Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye 
shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. — Jesus. 

These are they which make poor men rich. — Bishop Hall. 

'T was an angel visited the green earth, 
And took the flowers away. — Longfellow. 







CI NCI NNATI: 

HITCHCOCK AND WALDEN. 

NEW YORK: NELSON & PHILLIPS. 

1876. 



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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876, by 

HITCHCOCK & WALDEN, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



TO THE 



ereauect Jfatljers w& jjjoiherS, 



INTO 

WHOSE HOMES, DURING A MINISTRY OF TWENTY YEARS, 

THE AUTHOR 

HAS BEEN CALLED TO SPEAK WORDS OF COMFORT AND IN- 
STRUCTION IN THE HOURS OF DEEPEST SORROW; 

AND 



I" H e "* o ^v 



OF THE DEAR CHILDREN SAFELY GARNERED FROM THE 
HOMES OF PASTOR AND PEOPLE, 

AND 

IN TOKEN OF AFFECTIONATE REMEMBRANCE, 

S>hi$ Volume 

IS MOST TENDERLY INSCRIBED. 



PREFACE 




HE author is indebted to a little 
dying girl, not much over half a 
dozen years old, for the title of this 
book. The little sufferer was nearing the 
gates of the Celestial City; her weeping 
father sat by her bedside, holding the hand 
of his dear child in his own, while his face 
was wet with tears. In a moment of ease, 
for she was a great sufferer, she looked up 
into that tearful face and said : ' ' Papa, 
do n't cry; I '11 be just inside the gates when 
you come." 

What could have been said more touchingly 
beautiful than that? How full of cheer! How 



full of comfort! 



What stronger chain is there 



6 PREFACE. 

to bind the heart of a stricken parent about the 
gates of heaven than the knowledge that a dear 
child is inside those gates? * 

For the subject-matter of this book, he is 
indebted to a sad, and yet joyful, experience. 
He knows what it is to be "joyful in tribula- 
tion." He writes about what he has felt, as 
well as thought. 

He and his companion have gone away four 
times from the new-made grave of a sweet child. 
And in this hard discipline they have learned 
that in the most bewildering gloom a star may 
yet shine out of the heavens to guide us on the 
voyage of life, and that the blackest cloud which 
ever hangs over mortal sky has a silver lining to 
the eye of faith. They have mourned in their 
Gethsemane, and they have rejoiced on their 
Olivet. 

There are those whose eyes may fall on 
these lines, whose dear children stand at the 
gates of "home, sweet home, ,, or who come 
tripping over the pavement to meet them when 
they return from places of toil or pleasure, who 



PREFACE. 7 

have not been called to pass through the sor- 
rows of bereavement. Still, they may read this 
book, and be possibly all the better prepared 
for the affliction when it does come. 

The author has not forgotten that there are 
other gates than those of the heavenly world to 
be thought of. The Home> the Sunday-school, 
and the Churchy are sacred inclosures. Here 
are gates to be garlanded with beauty, and 
guarded with care. 

There are many homes in this world where 
loving mothers preserve with religious care the 
little "playthings" which the baby left, and 
cherish sweet memories of the dear ones "gone 
on before." To all such these pages offer in- 
struction and comfort, w T ith w r hat success the 
reader must be the judge. 

Hoping, then, that what he has written may 
serve in some degree to brighten the pathway 
of others, and make them stronger to bear up 
under the burdens of life; and that it may, 
though it be in a small way, call more attention 
to the child and its moral culture; and with a 



8 PREFACE. 

sincere and earnest desire that both writer and 

reader may become in heavenliness n asa little 

child," — he sends this volume forth upon its 

mission. 

THE AUTHOR. 

Jackson, Michigan, 1875. 




CONTENTS 



I. Short and Simple Annals, 
II. The Empty Crib, . 

III. Sympathy, True and False, 

IV. Child-Life, . 
V. Child-Culture, 

VI. The Spiritual Nursery, 
VII. Children Saved, 
VIII. Children Lost, 
IX. Life and its Lessons, 
X. Darkness and Light, . 
XL The Silver Lining, . 
XII. Our Immortal Future, 



13 
33 
S3 
75 
99 
121 

139 
163 
189 
207 
229 
245 



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" There is no flock, however watched and tended, 
But one dead lamb is there; 
There is no fireside, howsoe'r defended, 

But has one vacant chair. 
The air is full of farewells to the dying, 

And mourning for the dead ; 
The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, 
Will not be comforted." 



" Had he lived and fallen (as who of us 
Doth perfectly? and let him that is proud 
Take heed lest he do fall), he would have been 
A sadness to them in their aged hours. 
But now he is an honor and delight, 
A treasure of the memory, a joy 
Unutterable; by the lone fireside 
They never tire to speak his praise, and say 
How, if he had been spared, he would have been 
So great and good and noble." 




EADER, have you ever walked 
slowly and thoughtfully through a 
cemetery? I know you have. It 
was, perchance, on a pleasant Summer 
evening, before the twilight shadows had 
fallen, when all was still and hushed, that 
you wended your way amid the tomb- 
stones, and thought of the dead. 

These habitations of the dead are 
every-where. Close beside every city, 
village, and hamlet, filled with men and 
women whose hearts are pulsating with 
life and hope, there is the city of the 
dead, where ' ' every tombstone we look upon in 
this repository of past ages is both an enter- 
tainment and a monitor." 

As you walked there on that Summer even- 
ing, and thought of the dead, and of the great 

13 



14 INSIDE THE GATES. 

hereafter, there came over your spirit a feeling 
of inexpressible sadness. The scenes around 
you became prophecies of your own dissolu- 
tion. The thoughts of death came welling up 
in your mind, and you said to yourself, "I, 
too, must die." 

But as you walked there, amid those marble 
slabs and grassy mounds, where old and young, 
poor and rich, friend and stranger, lay buried 
together in that equality which the grave gives; 
and as these solemn surroundings impressed 
themselves upon you, did there not also come 
to you a feeling of hope which sweetened the 
sadness? Did not your thoughts bound 

" From death's dark caverns, in the earth below, 
To spheres where planets roll and comets glow ?" 

And did you not look away from this world of 
sin and anguish, labor and care, to that bright 
world beyond the shadows of the grave, where 
the soul shall have eternal rest? 

There, on one tombstone, was a finger point- 
ing upward, which told of the hope cherished 
by some stricken heart. And again, on the 
head-stone of a little grave was carved a lamb 
or dove, symbol of innocence. Here, too, were 
choice flowers, expressions of love, emblems of 
the soul's immortality. As you strolled about 



SHORT AND SIMPLE ANNALS. 1 5 

beneath the weeping willows, and read the epi- 
taphs, and saw the emblems of hope and love, 
you felt a strange drawing toward the better life 
which lies just beyond the boundary of our 
'present vision. 

I am now going to beg a few moments of 
your time, and ask you to take a walk with me 
into a very small cemetery, comprising four 
little graves. To me this is in one sense a sad 
place, in another it is not. I am sad when I 
think of the loss I have sustained ; but when I 
remember the dear children, and think of their 
bliss, I am glad. My heart has bled, my spirit 
has reeled beneath successive blows ; I have 
walked the way of sorrow with a bowed head; 
still, I have not fainted nor fallen. In the midst 
of all these afflictions my confidence has not 
been shaken ; I have been able to say, ' ' Though 
He slay me, yet will I trust in him." 

We must look upon death and dying as one 
of the necessary steps in our great life journey. 
Death is not the end of being; it is rather the 
beginning. As you and I stand by the graves 
of our dear children, it is our privilege to feel 
that they have been promoted. They have been 
saved the hardships and turmoil of these slow- 
rolling years of earth-life, and have commenced 
on the higher plane of spiritual being. They 



1 6 INSIDE THE GATES. 

have reached the Summer land, the land of 
beauty and of song, 

" Where fragrant flowers immortal bloom, 
And joys supreme are given." 

They are gone from us, but we shall meet them 
again. Blessed thought ! As we sit by our 
little graves, the curtain is lifted before the eye 
of faith, and light comes streaming in upon us 
from above. We forget the past, and look for- 
ward to the meeting-time ; and there comes over 
the spirit a sweet hope, that is like a beautiful 
sunrise after a dark and perilous night. 

But what means it that so many of our 
world's population die in infancy? Go into any 
cemetery and number the little graves, and you 
will almost wonder what fatal scourge has swept 
away the dear lambs from so many households. 
What cruel Herod has murdered the innocents? 
I can see no reason why a man who lives to be 
seventy should not live to be a hundred, or even 
five hundred years old. There is evidently a 
reason for it in the mind of the great Father, 
and a law against it. We know that people 
sometimes "die of old age. " The human ma- 
chine seems to wear out, and the spirit takes its 
flight. I can not see why my children should 
have died, why your sweet and promising child 
must die. I only know that die they do, and 



SHORT AND SIMPLE ANNALS. 1J 

die they will, till the end of time. Shield them 
by day and by night, guard their clothing, their 
food, and their habits ; and while good care may 
preserve some, and thus decrease the ' ' death- 
rate/' yet still they will die. The strong, 
healthy, robust child will sicken in a day, and 
another fresh mound will tell of sad hearts and 
a desolate home, and of another beautiful spirit 
redeemed and crowned in the everlasting king- 
dom. I can only say that in that which is 
so universal there must be some good. Happy 
are they w T ho can look up and say, "Our 
Father." 

It is not for the purpose of obtruding my 
personal griefs on the ear of a patient and con- 
siderate public that I attempt to recount my 
own sad experiences. This chapter is, at least 
in part, exceptional, and I place it here as an 
apology — rather, I should say, as the assignment 
of a reason why I write on this subject. Per- 
haps my affection gets the better of my judg- 
ment. Still, I can not convince myself that I 
ought to omit what follows. It seems fitting 
that I should lay the foundation for what I have 
to say in my own personal experience of sorrow ; 
and, consequently, when I offer words of comfort 
to others, they will know that I speak from the 
same grounds where they have stood. 



1 8 INSIDE THE GATES. 

It will not take you long to read these 
"Short and Simple Annals," while it gives me 
a peculiar pleasure to put these names in just 
here. If you were passing by the place where 
these little ones sleep, you would willingly pause 
and read the names and the inscriptions on their 
tombstones, as I have done many a time — names 
even of strangers; and as I read I wondered 
about the sorrowing hearts and the vacant 
chairs, and tried to feel a deep, pure sympathy 
for the . bereft. Then, you will please regard 
this chapter as a little monument erected by a 
stricken father to the memory of four dear 
children — the fourth an adopted child — whose 
departure to their upper home makes him at 
times long to follow them. These little graves 
are to me a border land, quite on the verge of 
heaven. I sit there, this moment, in my imag- 
ination feeling that I am not far from the king- 
dom, and from those I love. 

I do not believe in giving way to a grief that 
will neither be solaced nor controlled; equally 
do I not believe in a stoical creed which seeks 
to banish from the heart its warmth, and robe 
it in the chilliness of an iceberg. My sorrow 
has not been greater than that which has come 
upon thousands of others, perhaps not half so 
great as that which has befallen many another 



SHORT AND SIMPLE ANNALS. 1 9 

household; but still it has been great. I have 
had my sorrow and my joy; the comfort I have 
felt may comfort others. I cherish the warmest 
love for children. All these considerations move 
me to write. 

The first born and first buried of my house- 
hold was our little "Pet. " Just why we spon- 
taneously called her so I can not tell, only that 
she was a real pet in the family. All loved her, 
all petted her, all enjoyed her childish compan- 
ionship, all were interested in her baby prattle ; 
and even grandpa, old and venerable, yielded to 
the universal sentiment, and became her loyal 
subject. She quite won his heart one day, by 
looking up into his face, and with both hands 
laying hold of his long, white beard. She drew 
him down to her, or herself up to him, I 
scarcely remember which; but ever afterward 
she was "grandpa's pet. " 

Now, I very well know that some staid, 
sober, and solid kind of people would call all 
this mere sentimentality, and regard it as posi- 
tively unmanly and unwomanly to indulge in it. 
But as an offset to what they may say or think, 
I w r ould remark that whatever is so innocent, 
and so productive of a better kind of feeling, 
should be cultivated, for the fruit it yields in real 
and substantial pleasure. 



20 INSIDE THE GATES. 

Life is very short, our families are soon 
broken, our dear friends are ever going from 
us; so it should be our study to get out of life 
all the joy we can. The truth is, one can not 
afford to dispense with these " sweet amenities'' 
of life. They cost so little, and yield such 
golden harvests of comfort to the heart, that I 
wonder why this great world is not richer in 
them than it is. 

Our "Pet" was known by no other name in 
the whole circle of relationship. Years have 
passed away since her sweet spirit winged its 
way to heaven. The companions of her child- 
hood have grown to maturity; but whenever I 
meet them, though these long years have passed 
away, they still carry in their recollection the 
name of their playmate — they still talk to me of 
"Pet. " It does me good to know that she is 
remembered; it shows she did not live in vain. 
"Pet," with us, did not mean a spoiled child. 
The word, to our minds, expressed rather the 
idea of fondness; with her it was only a name. 
She came to us on the 12th of April, 1853, and 
left us on the 21st of October, 1856. In her 
baptism we named her Anna Emily. A little 
tombstone in the cemetery at Twinsburg, Ohio, 
my first pastoral charge, bears the name, and 
beneath it the dust, of the dear departed child. 



SHORT AND SIMPLE ANNALS. 21 

" Early, bright, transient, chaste as morning dew, 
She sparkled, was exhaled, and went to heaven." 

She is safe "inside the gates." 

That quiet and beautiful place is holy ground 
to us; But let me tell you a little more of the 
sad story. J. Espey came and went, but re- 
mained with us a much shorter time than she 
whose "little feet had climbed the golden stair." 
He was born January 22, 1858, and died the 
following August. It seemed as if he had just 
called to make our acquaintance before speeding 
on to his real home. His was a spirit destined not 
for time, but for x eternity. Nearly a score of 
years have passed since I pressed him to my 
heart as my dear boy. He lingers in my mem- 
ory yet as a sweet babe, full of romp and 
frolic. I love to sit down quietly, and live 
over those days again. It is like turning back 
the pages of some charming book, to re-peruse 
those passages, which pleased me most. I do 
not wish to forget my boy. I can this moment 
see him, as he used to sit on the floor, sur- 
rounded by his toys. I can see him dropping 
all when he heard my heavy step approaching; 
and then he would look up into my face, and 
plead so eloquently to be taken into my arms, 
and carried to see the horse, or out into the 
door-yard to see the birds and flowers. 



22 INSIDE THE GATES. 

I can see him as he grew sick and pale and 
thin, and as he lay in his crib with congestion 
of the brain, slowly but surely coming under 
the fatal touch of death. I well remember, 
though long and busy years have passed since 
then, the sad moment when the spirit left the 
body, and the day when we laid him away to 
sleep by the side of his little sister, our "Pet." 
On the same tombstone in that rural cemetery 
are the two names, which, though unknown to 
the world, have a tender meaning to two strug- 
gling mortals. He, too, is safe ' ' inside the gates. " 

Then, again, while pastor of the Mathewson- 
street Methodist Episcopal Church, in Provi- 
dence, Rhode Island, our third child sickened 
and died, and now lies entombed in Swan's 
Point Cemetery, within sound of the beating 
waves of Narragansett Bay. No more truly 
delightful spot could be found on this round 
earth for grave of child or man. He came to 
us April I, 1863, and left us July 29th, of the 
same year. We called him Joseph Mathewson, 
after the Church of which I was pastor. His 
little body knew no day free from pain. It 
seemed such a mystery that a sweet, innocent 
child should be made to suffer so much. He 
expired in a terrible convulsion, which I had no 
power to relieve. But I knew that death was 



SHORT AND SIMPLE ANNALS. 23 

the portal which would admit him to the society 
of those which had gone before. 

" Three cherubs met upon the other shore." 

He is mine, safe "inside the gates." 

The years passed away, and 1870 found us 
at Adrian, Michigan, one of the garden-spots of 
the West. The church is one of the finest, the 
society one of the largest. The parsonage was 
roomy, and the grounds around were so inviting, 
that I could not help thinking what a good home 
we could offer to some one of the many little 
waifs, thrown upon the world by adverse fate, 
in need of a home. But there were other 
rooms, larger than those of the parsonage, and 
more beautiful, that were tenantless, and other 
grounds than those surrounding it that had long 
been unpressed by the feet of childhood. I 
mean heart rooms, heart grounds. These rooms 
were all ready for an occupant. Dark shadows 
had fallen on those grounds, which the tripping 
of little feet and the merry, ringing laugh of 
childhood would dispel. 

Home without children is not home, in its 
highest, truest sense. In the early portion of 
married life, people may be satisfied to live 
alone, and enjoy each other's society, without 
the additional care of children ; but there will 



24 INSIDE THE GATES. 

come a time in the life of such a family when 
the presence of children would be prized above 
any other earthly blessing. To see two old 
people living in the days of the "sere and 
yellow leaf," without child or grandchild to 
look to or lean upon, is a melancholy spectacle. 
It is a terrible penalty to pay for the selfishness 
of human nature. To see venerable people 
surrounded by their own offspring, blessed with 
children and children's children, is a beautiful 
sight, and the Great Father intends this to be 
the boon of most people. If death interposes, 
it must be received as a "blessing in disguise." 
But there are so many children born into the 
world homeless, deserted by one or both par- 
ents, or left orphans, that any who are deprived 
by death of their own, or denied the blessing by 
Providence, can yet find children to fill up the 
gap. It would almost seem as if God took 
some away to make room for others. 

"But how can I love another person's 
child?" is often asked. The experience of 
most people who have tried the experiment 
of adopting children is, that they can and do 
love them, if they are lovable, as they would 
their own. Reader, if you have a house, open 
its doors to some poor child ; give it a home. 
It will do you good, as well as the child. 



SHORT AND SIMPLE ANNALS. 25 

At the time above mentioned, we felt a great 
desire to adopt some poor child and give it a 
home, and we so expressed ourselves to others. 
Some said, You may get yourself into trouble; 
you can not love it as your own. It may be- 
come wayward — a heart-break to you. My 
answer was, Life is a succession of risks and 
ventures. Our own children have as much of 
what divines call depravity in them as the chil- 
dren of other people. When people marry, 
they take risks; when men go into commercial 
speculations, they assume risks. Every child 
born has before it a life fraught with perchances. 
I said, I am willing to try it. ' If the child I 
take becomes wayward, it shall be no fault of 
mine; it will be so from its innate tendencies — 
and the chances will be in its favor if I take it ; for 
I will throw around it the attractions "of a Chris- 
tian home, and follow it with my prayers. And 
who knows but I may thus "save a soul from 
death, and hide a multitude of sins?" Perhaps 
this is God's plan of making me useful to some 
one of my fellow-mortals. The child we take, 
through our influence and teachings, may grow 
up to a beautiful manhood or womanhood, and 
be a blessing to the world. Who can tell 
what good may come to two lives by such 
an act? 



26 INSIDE THE GATES. 

Within a short space of time quite a number 
of children were pointed out to me ; but among 
them all I did not see any one that I could take 
to my heart as I wished to do, and I did not 
desire to bring into the family a dear child, and 
then throw open only one room in the heart. 
If I took one, it must have the whole heart. 
All this may seem a little selfish, but I think it 
is not. God has endowed us with certain tastes 
which grow out of our individuality, that highest 
quality of human nature. I am not to blame 
for my tastes; so the child I might not prefer 
might yet please some one else. I had my 
ideal. Then I felt that love must be the su- 
preme power in my home, and unless I loved 
the child in a very true sense I could not do 
justice by it. Providence favored me. 

A friend called one day, with a bright, sweet, 
little girl, three and a half years old, of good 
parentage. The age suited me. She was young, 
and would easily take root in this new home 
soil. Her hair was golden — she was what they 
call a blonde — her eyes were a light blue. Her 
form was lithe and graceful. She called up 
the memory of my own child, whom fifteen 
years before I had buried. It did almost seem 
as though my departed one had returned to me 
again. The instant my eyes fell upon her I 



SHORT AND SIMPLE ANNALS. 2J 

said, She meets my taste. In some way she 
pleased me, and there was "love at first sight." 
I need not record here the movements that fol- 
lowed, only to say that on the 1st day of April, 
1871, little Carrie became a member of our 
family by adoption, and every room in the 
heart-house was thrown wide open to her; all 
the heart-grounds, as far as they could be, or 
ought to be, were consecrated to her. The 
Lord had taken away. Now he kindly gave, 
and I felt that I had a new aim in life. I un- 
consciously began to plan for Carrie. We lived 
for her, and she became as dear to us as our 
own lost babes. She seemed to have dropped 
down upon us like a bird from the skies. Her 
coming was as from heaven, and her presence 
gave us a new lease of life. 

I may say that in the adoption of a child 
there may be — there was with me — the addi- 
tional obligation growing out of that adoption. 
Let people do what they will with their own 
children, not much is said; but in the case of 
adoption, how many there are who stand ready 
to criticise and condemn every act, using their 
influence to the injury of both parties in the 
contract! So I felt always the great responsi- 
bility resting upon me. I said, This is an 
adopted child. 



28 INSIDE THE GATES. 

Two years and a quarter passed away, years 
of brightness and joy in the parsonage. The 
walks, the drives, the evenings, the mornings, 
the Summers, the Winters : O how much of 
pure happiness there was crowded into that 
brief time! But now, again, comes the sad 
part. In the Summer of 1873, while enjoying 
a vacation of a few weeks among friends in an- 
other State — a trip taken largely in dear Carrie's 
interest — she sickened and died. On Sunday, 
July 6th, she complained of a severe pain in her 
head. She grew rapidly worse, until I saw her 
the victim of that usually fatal malady, cerebro- 
spinal meningitis; and on the following Friday 
evening, just as the sun was casting his setting 
beams through the windows, the spirit of the 
dear child went away from our sight. I care- 
fully preserved the little body, brought it to our 
home, and laid it away to rest in Oak Wood 
Cemetery, near the edge of a steep bank, at 
whose base flow the waters of the River Raisin. 
I had gone as pastor to that same beautiful spot 
more than threescore times, to care for others 
who. had been called to part with their friends; 
but now the arrow had struck me, and I was 
bleeding from tire wound. But the words of 
consolation I had so often tried to speak to 
others came back to me now, and the Father 



SHORT AND SIMPLE ANNALS. 29 

gave me the opportunity of practicing in my 
own life what I had been preaching all these 
years to others. 

Little Carrie was a universal favorite. In 
our frequent drives with the "Black Horse and 
Carryall," her place was on the front seat. I 
promised her, when she was sick, that when we 
got home she should go riding in the carryall. 
I did not think then that she would die; but I 
made the promise good, as the reader will see 
from the following brief extract, cut from a 
local paper the day following the funeral. This 
may have no special interest to others; but it 
does a stricken heart good to tell the story, for 
which I crave the reader's indulgence: 

"A Sad Bereavement. — A very large congregation 
assembled at the Broad-street Methodist Episcopal Church 
yesterday, at four o'clock P. 1VL, to attend the funeral of 
Carrie Estella, adopted daughter of Rev. J. H. M'Carty. 
Little Carrie was an unusually bright child, and was be- 
loved by all who knew her. Large numbers of children 
were present to witness the services, and show their in- 
terest in and love for Carrie. . .- . It was indeed a 
beautiful and impressive service. The little casket, of 
black walnut, trimmed with silver molding, was borne by 
four boys of the Sunday-school, and drawn to the cem- 
etery in the family carryall. Four little girls, dressed 
in white, were seated, two on each side of the casket, 
while a groom led the black horse which drew the sweet 
child on her last ride. The pastor, with his wife and 
child, left home a few weeks ago, under the most favor- 



30 INSIDE THE GATES. 

able auspices, for a little vacation, and while with their 
friends were thus sorely stricken." . . . 

Her death was indeed a "sad bereavement' ' 
to me. I had made no calculation for such an 
event. But she was mine two and a quarter 
years, and every day of these years she made 
brighter. How glad I feel that she was ours so 
long ! I felt very grateful to my Heavenly 
Father for such a blessing. Years may pass 
away, but the name and memory of Carrie, and 
of my other dear children, will never pass away 
from the recollection. Amid earth's shadows 
and sunshine we toil on, hope on. 

" In that land of beauty, in that home of joy, 

By the gates they '11 meet us, 'neath that golden sky, 
Meet us at the portal, meet us by and bye." 




3p Jrojtitj SrtL 



" O, MY heart is a garden, and blossoming there 
Is a fragrant and delicate flower; 
I guard it with care; 
So tender and rare, 
And so fair, 
It would die in a shower. 

O, my heart is a desert, my flower is not here ; 
I knew 't would be gone on the morrow. 
And sadly I go, 
Wearily and slow, 
To and fro, 
O'er the sands of my sorrow. 

Ah, my flower is transplanted to heaven so bright, 
By the Gardener; true to his love, 
It will bloom and be fair, 
And be safe for me there, 
In his care, 
Till I 'm summoned above." 



II. 




HAVE had no experience in life 
which has caused me a deeper sor- 
row of heart than the death of a dear 
I thought, when I came home 
S from the grave the first time, that the 
most expressive symbol of my loss was 
the little empty crib which stood in the 
corner of the room. 

On beginning that very interesting 
chapter in our lives, housekeeping, one 
of the requisites was a crib. People can 
have in their own homes what boarders, 
whose chief study is to economize space, must 
generally be denied. Now that we had gone 
to housekeeping, the little two-year-old must 
have a crib. 

Then I happened to be in just that condition 
wherein it was necessary for me to husband my 

3 33 



i 



it 



34 INSIDE THE GATES. 

pecuniary resources, which at best were not 
very abundant; and hence, wherever it was 
possible, I used my hands, and whatever inge- 
nuity I possessed, to construct articles for 
household use. Every well-furnished house, 
I thought, should have a crib. Mine must 
have one. 

I am not ashamed here to put on record the 
fact that I could not afford to buy a crib such 
as I had seen at the furniture-shops, however 
desirable such an elegant article might be. 
Honest poverty is not to be despised. There 
is no other school where one learns so much, 
and so fast. It is really good to be poor. I 
think one of the chief mistakes we make, and 
one of the greatest barriers in the way of uni- 
versal happiness, lies in thinking that the money 
we possess is our own, and that they who have 
much of it are most happy. 

The discipline needed to ripen us into the 
better life often comes in the form of depriva- 
tions. The study of our means and our neces- 
sities; that is to say, the enumeration of what 
we want, or what we really must have — for our 
wants usually outnumber our actual necessities 
and the ability we possess of supplying them — 
is just such a study as humanity needs to 
develop the better traits. 



THE EMPTY CRIB. 35 

In our journeys we often pass by many tidy- 
looking houses, where all the surroundings indi- 
cate poverty, but not always degradation. Some 
people are poor and low, others are poor and 
high. We must distinguish between these 
two classes. I refer to houses where every 
thing shows that there is the study of econ- 
omy and neatness. There is the snowy cur- 
tain in the window, the pretty bed of flowers 
at the front door, the whitewashed fence, and 
many other things which go to indicate that 
those within are possessed of refined tastes and 
good traits of character. 

Well, to return. I set to work at making a 
crib. I always could plan in mechanical matters 
better than I could execute. I would not care 
to show my work, but I can state the manner 
of procedure. The tools I used consisted of a 
saw, hammer, and auger. Taking the little one 
by the hand, I went to the barn, one bright, 
beautiful Autumn morning, to make a crib. It 
was an era in the dear child's life, a real gala- 
day. She was going to have a crib all her own, 
and papa was going to make it — a crib by a 
stretch of terms, by the way. She was as 
much interested in the work as I was, and knew 
nearly as well how to proceed as I did. I sawed 
off four blocks of wood, each about a foot in 



36 INSIDE THE GATES. 

length, into the ends of which I bored holes 
and put castors. Then I nailed on strips, for 
ends, sides, and bottom, and the crib was com- 
plete, with the most trifling outlay of time and 
money. When it was done I felt that my inge- 
nuity had triumphed over my impecuniosity. 
The crib was put to its place, and the little 
darling of my house was as delighted with it as 
if she had come into the ownership of the most 
beautiful and costly piece of furniture in the 
world. For eighteen happy months, night by 
night, she sweetly slumbered in it, by my own 
bedside, 

" Tended and watched by angels, bending o'er, 
Waiting to bear her to that far-off shore." 

I have looked back to that morning's work a 
thousand times, as to one of the most pleasant 
hours of my life. Making the "crib" yielded 
far more pleasure to father and child than if 
some one had presented us one much finer. 

Sleeping by my bedside, the dear child would 
sometimes become wakeful during the long 
nights. Some noise would disturb her slum- 
bers, or something in her dreams would affright 
her. Then she would call to me. I laid down 
with the care of her on my mind; it was my 
choice to do so. The first sound of that little 
voice would generally arouse me. She usually 



THE EMPTY CRIB. 37 

said, "Papa, hold my hand." Then I would 
reach out and take her little hand in my own, 
and in a few moments she would fall asleep 
again. Some way, she felt secure with her 
hand in mine. 

Now, is there not here a lesson for us all? 
Are we not all children of a common Heavenly 
Father? Are there not times when we are 
fearful and distrustful? Earth has many a long, 
dark night of sorrow, many a disturbing trial, 
many an enemy. Let us not forget our Father, 
w T ho will take our hand in his. Can aught harm 
us if he protects? Can we in the darkness say 
and feel that we are safe, in the storm feel that 
no evil shall come nigh unto us? Is it not 
written, "He shall hide me in his pavilion, in 
the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me?" 
O happy, trusting love, that can say, always, 
"My Father," and then lean on Him for 
support ! 

That little, homely crib of ours, which would 
not have brought three shillings in any second- 
hand furniture-shop, was still valuable to us be- 
because of its associations, and we preserved it 
a long time for the dear child's sake. The sight 
of that crib would call forth our tears. I some- 
times thought we did wrong in giving way to 
our feelings so much. But what are these 



38 INSIDE THE GATES. 

emotions for? Then, again, would-be comfort- 
ers would tell us not to grieve, for the child 
was better off than when it was living in the 
flesh, and that we could go to it by and by. 
All this may have been well-meant advice and 
consolation, which in the abstract was entirely 
true; but it utterly failed to make any impres- 
sion on our minds. 

Before death came to our home, I had often 
been called upon,, as a pastor, to comfort others 
in their sorrows; and I too had given just such 
advice, to those who stood weeping by the 
coffins of their loved ones, as others were now 
giving to us. But when the sorrow touched 
me, I found how far short I had come in my 
efforts to impart consolation. I felt like going 
straightway to every poor, sorrowing mother 
whose child had died, to confess my fault, to 
unsay nearly all I had said, to bid them weep; 
for I found tears to be a relief to a wounded soul. 

" Tears yet are ours, whene'r misfortunes press; 
And though our weeping fails to give redress, 
Long as their fruits the changing seasons bring, 
Those bitter drops will flow from sorrow's spring." 

God intended us to weep. Even "Jesus 
wept." It is said of the great Edmund Burke, 
that when he lost his only son his grief was 
appalling. He would sit in that unnatural calm- 



THE EMPTY CRIB. 39 

ness of despair which was even more terrific 
than the display of the wildest passion. Then 
a burst of frenzy would come over him, and he 
would rush into the room where lay the form 
of his child, and call in accents of fearful 
anguish for the hope of his age and the comfort 
of his declining and now joyless years. 

There is an old saying, ''Little griefs speak; 
great griefs are dumb," which I can hardly 
indorse. In my opinion, it is a matter of tem- 
perament. Great griefs do speak. But, then, 
I know one's sorrows may become so great that 
there comes over the soul the "calmness of 
despair;" then tears are impossible. I have 
heard a broken-hearted mother say, "O, if I 
could only weep !" Such grief endangers health, 
and life itself. Here is mystery, an explanation 
of which would show us that we are fitted by 
this hard discipline the better to serve others. 
There are just two things in human life to be 
especially mindful of, — love to God and love to 
man. In such service we realize the highest 
perfection of our own being. 

Ever, after death had invaded my home, I 
said to the bereaved and stricken ones around 
me, Weep, for in tears the spirit finds solace. 
After a baptism of tears the heart comes 
nearer its reconciliation. Tears shed at the 



40 INSIDE THE GATES. 

grave in some sense become a fresh tribute 
of love. When people become in the highest 
sense refined and cultivated in their feelings, 
they are more susceptible to sorrow, and more 
capable of true joy. There are heights of 
pleasure to whose bright summits the barbarian 
never comes, never can come. All genuine 
pleasure is spiritual, and implies high moral 
development. Jesus said, (t Man shall not live 
by bread alone." The sources of the truest life 
are not the material things which surround us. 
Then, welcome a spiritual cultivation that, while 
it makes us subjects of deeper woe, also elevates 
us to a companionship with angels. The savage 
mother can not mourn for her dead babe as the 
morally developed Christian mother mourns 
for hers. 

% " Dearly bought, the hidden treasure 

Finer feelings can bestow ; 
Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure 
Thrill the deepest notes of woe." 

If the Christian heart feels a deeper grief, its 
consolation is also greater. The Christian's 
hope comes in to assuage the troubled spirit. 

As my second child gasped his last breath, 
and the spirit had fled, the mother bent over 
his little tender form, and gave full vent to her 
feelings. Up to this moment they were in part 



THE EMPTY CRIB. 4 1 

suppressed. While there was life there was 
hope. Now that all was over, and the dear 
eyes were closed forever on this world, there 
was no feeling of that heart but what had its 
foundation in sorrow.. She wanted to caress the 
little body once more, ere it grew stiff and cold. 
She craved, as a last act, the privilege of press- 
ing the dear babe to her breast just one more 
time. It was an instinct of a motherly heart. 
Every tender emotion of that heart w r as stirred. 
The foundation of her whole being was shaken. 
Just then a well-meaning and really kind-hearted 
woman, one who had never lost a child, who 
never had one to lose, appointed herself mistress 
of ceremonies, and, being of strong will and 
equally strong arm, almost by force tore that 
bereaved and stricken mother from the lifeless 
form of her child, and bore her away to another 
room, vehemently exhorting her all the time not 
to weep and give way to her feelings; that it 
was wrong; that the indulgence of such grief 
was not the way to be resigned to the will of 
God. I say it was a well-meant effort to do a 
kind act; but if heart-instincts mean any thing, 
and surely they do, God has not endowed this 
human nature with such susceptibilities only to 
be crushed out. Then, the meant kindness was 
really an unkindness. The poor woman made a 



42 INSIDE THE GATES. 

mistake, that was all. But that mother, to this 
day, has not forgotten that hour, and never will 
she forget it while her memory is enthroned 
upon its seat. 

Ever after death had come to my home, and 
by a bitter experience, I had been made to un- 
derstand what the word bereavement meant, I 
said to those who came to me for consolation, It 
is your right to weep, your duty to feel. The 
Father does not expect you to go through all 
this without feeling. As the plowshare breaks 
up the hardened soil for seed-time and harvest^ 
so God's providential chastisements prepare the 
hearts of his children for a glorious spiritual 
fruitage. "No chastisement for the present 
seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; neverthe- 
less, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of 
righteousness unto them which are exercised 
thereby.' ' (Hebrews xii, II.) Through death 
He bringeth life, out of darkness he causes the 
beautiful light to stream. He has our whole 
existence in view, for eternity as well as time. 
He may make us unhappy . now, in order to 
make us happy in the future. These griefs are a 
discipline which shall bring us nearer our Father. 
Some one has said, "The rod of affliction is a 
branch cut from the tree of life." The difficulty 
with us is, we are too earthly. If God had not 



THE EMPTY CRIB. 43 

interposed, we should not have thought of him 
or the heaven he has prepared for us. 

So I say the deaths of our children may be a 
bitter grief to us ; but they become the burnished 
links of gold which bind our poor hearts about 
the throne of Infinite Love. With such views, 
I have gone to the sobbing mother, every fiber 
of whose body was quivering with suppressed 
emotion, and I have said to her, Weep, mother, 
you will find relief in tears. God has as surely 
constructed the heart for feeling as for pulsating, 
the eye for weeping as for seeing, else why does 
universal humanity weep when great sorrows 
come upon it? Why have all men located the 
emotions in the heart, I mean the fleshly heart? 
Such a universal sentiment is not without a 
foundation in the nature of things, and the heart 
does sometimes break literally. As the brain is 
the seat of intelligence, so the heart is the seat 
of the moral feelings. 

I have said to the mother, Go, when the 
freshness and beauty of Spring come, when the 
buds are bursting into leaves, when the grass is 
green beneath your tread; go, when the sweet 
flowers are opening their petals and exhaling 
their fragrance, filling all the air with their deli- 
cate aroma; go to the little grave where your 
darling sleeps; plant flowers, train the myrtle, 



44 INSIDE THE GATES. 

and bedew the little mound with your warm, 
fresh tears; and in this service of love you will 
be soothed, your spirit will be calmed; you will 
have been in communion with the angels. They 
will come to you, as they came to Jesus, and 
"minister unto you." 

I looked at the empty crib and wept; but I 
reasoned as well. My grief seemed too great to 
bear; but then I thought of the empty cribs in 
thousands of other homes in every land; and 
dear as were my children to me, to us, they 
were no dearer than other people's children were 
to them. I could see the brightness or the beauty 
of my own child as I might not see it in others ; 
as others might not see it in mine. Every fa- 
ther should think his own the dearest in the 
world. Our children are sweeter to us, simply 
because they are ours. It is right for us to feel 
thus, and to act upon it as a principle. All 
men admire such a love, and such an expression 
of the tender affection. The Father has thus 
wisely thrown around the child this protective 
shield of love. 

As I gazed on the empty crib, I thought of 
this great brotherhood of sorrow. How we do 
come together on this plane! The world some- 
times seems very cold and formal; but then let 
some great calamity overtake us, and it will 



THE EMPTY CRIB. 45 

wake up the love of human hearts all around 
us. People whom we did not know will come 
and speak tenderly to us, and proffer their serv- 
ices with a heartiness which we can feel. One 
after another came to me, of whose deep per- 
sonal griefs I knew nothing, and could not 
know, until I had walked in the same hard road 
myself. And thus I learned to think more 
about them, and feel more for them. 

I used often to wonder why Mrs. B — al- 
ways wore mourning, and why her face always 
had such a weary expression. She looked as 
though she had never smiled. Her features, 
which were naturally fine, had the semblance of 
a clay or iron cast, as if her face w T as never made 
to wear a smile. She did smile sometimes, poor 
woman! but it was the result of effort, and not 
the spontaneous outgushing of a glad and cheer- 
ful heart. I knew she had met with the loss of 
one or more children. Always, when I went 
there, she talked about them, and showed me 
their pictures. It seemed to do her good to 
tell over the story. I tried to comfort her by 
telling her that they were better off, and that 
she must look on the bright side, and live to 
meet them in heaven. But the Father prepared 

me to do Mrs. B and others good, by 

afflicting me in the same w r ay. Then I could 



46 INSIDE THE GATES. 

go to her as I never did before; for we had a 
common sorrow. Just over in the cemetery 
were three little mounds in one lot, and near 
them one little grave in another lot. One day 
we met there, and in my heart I said, Poor, 

afflicted Mrs. B , I do pity you ! I thought 

it was no wonder that she looked sad and weary 
and disconsolate. There were her three little 
graves against my one; for up to that day my 
crib had only been emptied once — hers, three 
times. I had kissed my dying child, and sadly 
parted with it; she had kissed and parted with 
her three. I said, No wonder she wears the 
mourning garment, when all the birds of her 
nest have flown away to a new clime. If in my 
home the disappearance of one little form, the 
absence of two little pattering feet, should make 
the home, otherwise bright and cheerful, so un- 
bearably dull and quiet, how must it seem in 
her home, from which three have been taken? 
Our homes from which children have been 
taken are 

" Like the vase in which roses have once been distilled. 
You may break, you may ruin the vase, if you will ; 
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still." 

I said to her : The frost which nips the foliage 
of the mulberry-tree does not kill the silk-worm 
cradled in its leaves. So death may blight our 



THE EMPTY CRIB. 47 

homes, without destroying us. You have lost, 
I have lost; but there is good in it all. Let us 
arise from the earth, where we sit in our sorrow, 
and behold the day of God. Let us be learners 
in this school, where Jesus teaches to look 
through the grave out into the blissful regions 
of immortality. 

" What God intended as a blessing and a boon 
We have received as such ; and we can say 
A solemn, yet a joyful, thing is life, 
Which, being full of duties, is for us 
Of gladness full, and full of lofty hopes." 

There, too, was Mr. S , whose son was a 

hopeless maniac, roaming the streets, at times 
raving w T ild — the dread of the household, the 
terror of the community. In his childhood he 
was unusually bright and promising. His early 
boyhood was really brilliant. The hopes of a 
whole family were centered in him. Even 
in his ravings, there was at times an effort at 
reason. It was like the sun struggling through 
the rifted clouds ; but, alas ! these clouds would 
not open, and the sun would stay hidden behind 
their thick masses. That father would often say, 
"O, if he had only died when he was a child, 
and I could remember him always as he was 
then!" But that flower had withered; that cup 
was dashed into fragments. The only prospect 



48 INSIDE THE GATES. 

was for poor G to be one of those unhappy- 
beings who are destined to run at large, dreaded 
alike by young and old, against whom the 
asylum is closed because the case is incurable. 
Had he died in infancy, leaving behind him an 
empty crib, that fond father and mother would 
have mourned; but now they bewail a heavier 
affliction. 

And there, too, was the C famiily. A 

beloved son had gone from home, they knew 
not whither. Perhaps he had sickened and died 
in some distant city; or, having gone to sea, he 
may by shipwreck or accident have gone to his 
final rest beneath old ocean's billows; or he 
may have met his fate by the hand of a mid- 
night assassin, or died a languishing death in 
some foreign prison. His fate they never could 
know; and so, in agony of spirit, they wended 
their dreary way through unbroken years of 
suspense. Ah, I could look upon my empty 
crib, and feel sure that my child was safe "in- 
side the gates;" I could go to my one little 
grave, and then to my two, and then to my 
three, and now four. I could plant flowers 
there, while I looked forward to the meeting- 
time which is sure to come by and by. I could 
call up their pretty ways, and their loving 
caresses. I could think of them, not as lost 



THE EMPTY CRIB. 49 

to me, but saved for me; for I know where 
they are. 

As I thought more about my empty crib, 
and came into closer sympathy with those who 
had been called upon to pass through these dark 
waters, I found myself becoming more fully 
reconciled to my loss. I settled down into the 
full conviction that it was all right and best ; 
for it had taken place under the eye of my 
Heavenly Father, "who doeth all things well. ,, 
I had nothing to remember of my dear children 
that was not pleasant, nothing to fear for them 
in the future. 

A precious and comforting feeling of owner- 
ship in my children cheers me greatly. I can 
say they are mine yet; and mine they will be 
forever. I shall endeavor to show, in a subse- 
quent chapter, how the child will grow in 
heaven; but, notwithstanding that, nothing can 
ever change the fact that these bright spirits in 
heaven were mine, in a very special sense. I 
was their earthly parent. You were once the 
father or mother of a little suffering mortal — 
now, of a glorified spirit before the throne 
of God. 

My crib stood empty ; for the child had gone 
where there is no night, where they do not 
sleep. That little crib not only signified the 

4 



50 INSIDE THE GATES. 

absent child, but it led the thoughts up to the 
heavenly home, where she had gone, 

" Far beyond the reach of mortal ken. 
No eye hath seen it, nor hath human pen 
Portrayed the glories of that world above, 
Whose very atmosphere is love. 
There Christians, who in union dwelt on earth, 
Heirs of its mansions by celestial birth, 
In blest society shall meet and blend." 

We are going home — the tender ones have 
gone on before us. They have reached the 
gates, which have opened to let them in, and 
they are safe. 




iijm|m% t Irt^ m& %nh$* 



" That loss is common, would not make 
My own less bitter — rather, more ; 
Too common. Never morning wore 
To evening, but some heart did break. 

This truth came borne with bier and pall ; 
I felt it when I sorrowed most : 
'T is better to have loved and lost, 

Than never to have loved at all." 



!C No radiant pearl, which crested fortune wears ; 
No gem, that twinkling hangs from beauty's ears; 
Not the bright stars, which night's blue arch adorn, 
Nor rising sun, that gilds the vernal morn, — 
Shine with such luster as the tear that flows 
Down virtue's manly cheek for others' woes." 



III. 




$yn\|)atliy, ¥ftie ki]d ^al^e. 

HEN all was over with my dear 
children, and the grave had shut 
them forever from my sight, I tried 
to feel reconciled. I felt that it was my 
£? duty to be resigned. But I questioned 
myself on this wise : What is resignation ? 
Is it to be indifferent? Is it to be in 
some way hardened? Does it mean that 
I am not to love the dear ones any 
more? Then I remembered that the in- 
tellect is one thing, and the heart quite 
another. I knew intellectually that my 
children were gone from me, beyond my 
powers of recall. I might complain about it, 
and wish it were otherwise; but the great and 
sorrowful reality could not be changed. A 
mother who once lost her child said to her 
pastor, "I can not, I will not, have it so." 

53 



A 



54 INSIDE THE GATES. 

"Yes; but what are you going to do about it?" 
said he. Now, his answer might seem harsh; 
but he felt that an appeal to her judgment was 
necessary. We must be reasonable in our griefs. 
I think there may be such a condition as 
mental resignation to the death of a child, while 
the heart yearns after and still clings to the 
object of its love. This I sought to feel in my 
own heart. My judgment assured me that there 
was some good in it all. God, who knows 
what is best for his children, had sent this 
sorrow on me and mine. My heart and mind 
were weighed down under the mighty burden 
of a great loss. Then I prayed to my Father 
to help me to endure the sorrow and the disap- 
pointment, to subdue the longing for the little 
clinging arms that death had unloosed, and the 
sweet voice and the patter of little feet that 
would never more make music in my home. 
Very soon I came to the realization of a great 
fact, namely : that my life was being molded by 
an intelligent will, rather than by a blind power 
in nature which had in it no pity. Looking up 
to God, and praying to be made obedient, ena- 
bled me to look forward to the time when I 
should be made "perfect through suffering." 

Then, as never before, did I understand the 
words of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, 



SYMPATHY, TRUE AND FALSE. 55 

when he cried out, in bitterness of soul, "0 my 
Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from 
me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou 
wilt!" That he should go and pray thus three 
times over, intensifies the thought. Jesus did 
not rebel against the Father's will, even though 
he prayed to be delivered from the bitterness 
of the cup. His human nature here and in this 
way asserted itself; but his higher, his divine, 
nature came in to aid him in the fearful ordeal 
through which his soul was passing. That ordeal 
was not the betrayal, the trial, the crucifixion; 
it was of far deeper significance. It was a 
spiritual agony of some kind, which made his 
soul "sorrowful even unto death." It must be 
that in that hour he in some way, without par- 
taking of sin, bore the sins of the whole world 
on his heart. He was then enabled to look 
back through all the past, and forward to all 
the future, while his eye swept around the 
whole horizon of the globe. Every woe of 
humanity then and there centered on him ; then 
and there he "tasted death for every man." 

But I was going to say that, as Jesus prayed 
"Let this cup pass," was it wrong for me, is it 
wrong for any father or mother, to pray the 
same prayer at the bedside of a dying child or 
beloved friend? Gladly indeed would I have 



56 



INSIDE THE GATES. 



had this cup pass from me ; but equally glad 
was I to know that if a burden of sorrow was 
laid upon me the Father would help me bear 
it. If Christ leads us into the dark, he will in 
time show us the "true light. ,J Then did I 
begin to realize that I had a sympathizing friend 
in Jesus. He taught me how to lie in the dust 
and pray, "Let this cup pass from me;" he 
also taught me how to rise and say and feel, 
"Thy will be done." In clinging to my dear 
children, I only gave expression to the richest 
gift of God to human nature: the affections of 
the heart. "Let this cup pass— Thy will be 
done," exactly expresses the position of the 
trustful and obedient disciple. Saying thus, 
with wounded heart, I waited the coming of 
the Healer. 

Very early in my ministerial life, I was called 
upon one day to minister consolation to a dying 
mother. It is a Jong time since that event — 
her name even has quite passed from my recol- 
lection; but I shall never forget the circum- 
stances, and the thoughts that passed through 
my mind during that pastoral visit. There, on 
her bed, lay that mother, pale and emaciated, 
while every thing in the room bore the marks 
of poverty. There were her children, three 
little girls — the youngest scarcely two years old, 



SYMPATHY, TRUE AND FALSE. 57 

the eldest not more than seven. The father 
was not present; and, from what I afterward 
learned, his presence was an annoyance rather 
than a source of comfort to his family at any 
time. I was young in years, and had none of 
the experience which older ministers possessed, 
and which years have given me. The case was 
urgent; the poor woman, to all human appear- 
ance, would die in a few days. Taking a seat 
by her bedside, I talked to her about dying. 
She said she was not ready to die. I asked her 
if she loved the Lord. "O yes," she answered; 
"and in my poor way I have tried to serve 
him." Then I said, "God will save you; you 
have nothing to fear — only trust him." I in- 
quired if she had ever made a profession of 
religion. She said she had, but had been de- 
prived of the privilege of attending Church 
because she could not leave her children. I 
noticed that the mention of her children affected 
her very much. I told her that the Father 
looks at the heart, and not at the outward acts 
so much. "By their fruits ye shall know 
them," said the Savior. We can not know the 
heart, the interior springs of thought. God 
looks deeper than man looks. I may misjudge 
my fellow-man; but he who knoweth the heart 
always judges correctly. I told the dying 



58 INSIDE THE GATES. 

woman that duty never called in two directions 
at the same time. When it was her duty to 
stay at home, and take good care of the little 
ones who needed her motherly attentions, it 
was not her duty to go to meetings of any kind. 

I did not say to her, but I will say here, that 
people may commit sin by too much church- 
going, as well as by too little. Christianity 
does not require of us to neglect home and 
children, husband or wife, to attend Church. I 
have known a iji&n to attend meetings, to the 
neglect of his business and the payment of his 
honest debts. I have known a mother to attend 
meetings while her children were racing through 
the streets and taking advantage of her absence 
to have dancing-parties in the parlor. Still I do 
not think this is a very prevalent sin — the tend- 
ency is rather to neglect the meetings by the 
generality of mankind. 

Believing all this, I assured that dying woman 
that, when she was at home caring for her chil- 
dren, she was just where God wanted her to be ; 
that people can serve God well in the home, if 
they have any heart to serve him at all. 

While I was talking, I noticed that she began 
to weep bitterly. The thought of her dear little 
girls, one of whom sat playing on the floor so 
innocently, so unconscious of its motherless 



SYMPATHY, TRUE AND FALSE. 59 

destiny, came up before her, and a great wave 
of sorrow swept across her soul. "I can not 
be resigned,' ' she sobbed out. "I am afraid 
God will not save me." 

It was not necessary to question her much. 
The difficulty in her case w r as apparent. That 
trio of little girls bound her to the world. But 
I said, in order to open the way to the subject, 
"What is there, dear woman, that you can not 
give up?" "My children," she answered, in 
broken utterances. "What will become of 
them? how can I leave them?" 

Standing at the foot of the bed was an 
elderly, hard-featured woman, who seemed to 
have charge of the house. She stood there to 
hear the young pastor talk, and perhaps to come 
to his aid if necessary. "Never mind the chil- 
dren, Mrs. , God will take care of them." 

She spoke in a loud and harsh tone of voice. 
The latter part of the sentence was true, and 
was said as I should have said it myself, except 
in its harshness. I realized that I was in a most 
critical position, namely: to substitute a conso- 
lation that would commend itself to that loving 
mother's heart for that of the woman who said, 
"Never mind the children." As well might 
she have told her not to mind the shortness of 
her breath, or the burning fever that was literally 



60 INSIDE THE GATES. 

consuming her life. I said to her, by way 
of what I thought better counsel: "Dear 
woman, you must not expect that while you 
are rational you can or will lose your motherly 
interest in these three dear little girls. God 
has given them to you, and he has given you 
power to love them and care for them. He 
never means you to cease loving them while 
you exist, in this world or the next. You may 
sorrow greatly at the thought of parting with 
them, and you may pray your Heavenly Father 
to spare you to them, if it be his will; but you 
know that God is good, and if he takes you 
away it will be for some wise purpose, which 
you now can not see. ' Now we see through a 
glass darkly, then face to face : now we know in 
part, but then shall we know, even as also we 
are known.' You will love your children more 
even than you do now. Our Father may per- 
mit you to watch over them by day and by 
night, a guardian angel ever near. God does 
not expect you to lose all your rational affection 
for those who are so near to you. You and 
they alike are children of a common Heavenly 
Father; all are members of God's great family. 
They may be here, and you there; but you can 
surely trust them to the care of one so wise 
and good. " I then opened my Bible, and read 






SYMPATHY, TRUE AND FALSE. 6 1 

the one hundred and third Psalm, which is so 
full of tenderness; and prayed for the mother, 
that she might be able to trust all to God, 
into whose care we should place all our in- 
terests. 

I have every reason to believe that poor 
dying woman was the better for my visit. She 
sajd before she died that, without loving the 
dear children any the less, she could resign 
them to the hands of her Father in heaven. 

When death came to my household, I learned 
something about human nature which I other- 
wise could not have known. God has various 
ways of schooling his children. There was one 
man in particular, whom I often met on the 
street, but to whom I had never spoken. I 
could never catch his eye long enough to even 
bow to him ; and among the things I dislike in 
this world is that of bowing to people in a 
friendly way, and getting nothing but a stare in 
return. But when one of my children was lying 
dead in its little casket, this same strange, weird 
sort of a man came to the house early one 
morning, bringing a beautiful bouquet of flowers, 
which he had gathered with his own hands. He 
did not look up at me as I opened the door; 
but, handing the flowers to me, he said, "Put 
them on the little casket for me." He then 



62 INSIDE THE GATES. 

turned and walked rapidly away. .That was 
true sympathy, modestly and beautifully ex- 
pressed. Ever afterward I had a new feeling 
of interest in that strange man. I could readily 
excuse his singular manners, for he had proved 
himself to me at a time when small acts are 
appreciated. 

There were some who came and t6ok us by 
the hand, and scarcely spoke, or if they did it 
was only a few tender words, which were like 
precious balm laid upon the soul. There were 
some people, on the other hand, who seemed to 
think that the more they could harrow up every 
feeling of the heart the more good they were 
doing me. With characteristic officiousness 
they rushed in upon me, at times when perfect 
solitude, with my own thoughts, would have 
been more consonant with my feelings than 
their honest, perhaps, though unwise, efforts to 
impart consolation. By a persistent and endless 
system of interrogation, they would seek to in- 
form themselves as to the nature and cause of 
the disease, and were sure to remark that it was 
always very fatal. Such people are quite apt to 
remind you that you might have known your 
child would die — they always felt it was not 
long for this world. Then, in their opinion, 
Dr. B would have understood and managed 



SYMPATHY, TRUE AND FALSE. 63 
the case much more successfully than Dr. C , 



whom you employed, and who always lost so 
many patients, and gave such strong medicine. 
They inquire about the symptoms, and why 
you did this or that. They carry you to the 
grave, and speak to you of the "dismal falling 
clod," and express their regret that the burying- 
ground is "such a watery place," closing their 
attempts at consolation by exhorting you m to 
"try and bear it, for it is the way of the 
world." It is hard to be deprived of one's 
friends — I had almost said it is harder to have 
one's privacy intruded upon by such miserable 
comforters. Genuine sympathy, like genuine 
piety, is usually quiet and undemonstrative; 
while either, put on for the occasion, is noisy 
and shallow. A stream of shallow water, only 
a few feet wide, makes more noise, as it flows 
along, than the Mississippi River. 

I received from time to time, after the death 
of a dear child, some very tender letters. I 
will insert a few brief extracts from some of 
them, hoping that they may comfort others as 
they did me. 

A brother minister wrote: 

' ' We this evening received your note, break- 
ing to us the sad news of the death of your 
dear child. We sympathize with you in this 



64 INSIDE THE GATES. 

your deep affliction. Even our children took a 
good cry when we told them they would never 
see their little playmate again. The news was 
so sudden and unexpected to us that we can 
scarcely realize it. Death has never yet, thanks 
to our Father, entered our home; and yet we 
can imagine something of your feelings in this 
your bereavement. What if it had been one 
of ours, whom we love so well? What if God 
had said, ' Restore your, trust; give me back 
my own?' What would be our feelings, and 
where would be our consolation? Could we 
say, from the heart, 'Thy will be done?' Could 
we indeed feel that 'of such is the kingdom of 
heaven?' And yet, is not this the bereaved 
parents' consolation, that the lost child is now a 
bright spirit, infinitely more happy, better cared 
for, better educated, enjoying a purer society 
than is possible to this earth-life? The flower 
is not blasted, only transplanted. 'She is not 
dead, but sleepeth,' are the words of Jesus, and 
they are offered to you, sorrowing ones. Such 
would be my consolation, were mine to go; 
such must be yours, now that your child has 
been taken. Think not of your dear one as 
being in the grave, but in heaven. Think of 
her as mingling with the spirit throng. Feel 
that, as never before, your hearts are bound to 



SYMPATHY, TRUE AND FALSE. 65 

the throne of God. Remember that ' God 
doeth all things well.' " 

Another wrote: 

"The intelligence of the death of your dear 
child was as painful as it was unexpected to us. 
In your letter to us, a few days ago, you men- 
tioned her sickness, but you apprehended no 
danger. O, how uncertain is life ! I know you 
are sad. Your house is lonely enough. I need 
not exhort you to be resigned. . . . How 
cheering now must be the doctrine of the atone- 
ment and the- resurrection. To you, the fact 
that Jesus died for all must be a precious 
thought just now. The sinless child is saved, 
even beyond a peradventure. The atonement 
says, 'All is well;' the resurrection truth com- 
pels the grave to say to the weeping parent, ' I 
will restore/ You sorrow now, as you look 
upon your empty crib ; but think of the spirit- 
treasure you have laid up in heaven. How 
strong is the tie which binds your hearts to 
heaven ! Yours is now a dispensation of sorrow. 
By and by God will raise the curtain which 
hides the mortal from the immortal, and you 
will see over into the better land, and your sor- 
row will be turned into joy." 

I received very many such letters from my 
friends, filled with words. of comfort and instruc- 

5 



66 INSIDE THE GATES. 

tion ; and being so true, and so kindly tendered, 
they made me feel thankful for sympathy. And 
yet there was the same void, the same cry of 
the heart after its treasure. It is easy to say, 
"Be reconciled ;" but the poor bruised and 
bleeding heart can not forget its pain and loss 
so easily. Only time, that great healer, and 
the precious pity and love of God, can lift us 
above such mighty griefs. 

A dear sister wrote: 

"It is only the breaking of the casket; the 
jewel is untouched. . . . You have the 
consciousness of her safety, and the memory of 
her sweetness, which must hang in your sky 
like a vision of glory. . . . Never before 
did I realize what a long, dark shadow one 
little coffin would cast. But if it be true that 
roughest rinds fold over sweetest fruits, and 
heaviest clouds rain the most ample harvests on 
the fields, and if deepest griefs have holiest 
ministries, then shall we all be better because 
of this bereavement ' God's ways are 

past finding out;' we can only trust and wait. 
To the eye of faith the pearly gates stand open 
wide, and out of the beautiful heaven I imagine 
the voice calls to us all : 

' Come to this happy land, 
Come, come away.' " 






SYMPATHY, TRUE AND FALSE. 67 

This universal human sympathy does put 
rather a cheerful aspect on life, after all. It is 
the rainbow that arches grandly over the cloud 
of sorrow; it is the sweet aroma that comes 
after the crushing of the flower. 

The first time I rose in the pulpit after a 
death in my household, I felt strangely drawn 
toward the people. That sorrow seemed to be 
divine. I said, It is of God; I am a better and 
a wiser man than I should have been without 
this experience. I am glad I have friends in 
heaven, glad I have children in heaven, — 

" Spirits elect, through suffering rendered meet 

For those blest mansions : from the nursery-door 
Bright babes, that climb up with their shining feet 
Unto the golden floor. 

These are the messengers, forever wending 

From earth to heaven, that faith alone may scan; 
These are the angels of our God, descending 
Upon the Son of man." 

A dear friend sent us the following, from the 
pen of an unknown writer, which has in it so 
much of beauty and of truthfulness that it may 
do others good, as it did me: 

"In his moral tillage God cultivates many 
flowers, seemingly only for their exquisite 
beauty and fragrance; for when bathed in soft 
sunshine they have burst into blossom, then the 
divine hand gathers them from the earthly fields, 



68 INSIDE THE GATES. 

to be kept in crystal vases in blessed mansions 
above. Thus little children lie — some in the 
sweet bud, some in fuller blossom; but never 
too early to make heaven fairer and sweeter 
with their immortal bloom. N 

" Verily, to the eye of faith nothing is fairer 
than the death of young children. Sight and 
sense indeed recoil from it. The flower that, 
like a breathing rose, filled heart and home with 
exquisite delight — alas ! we are stricken with 
sore anguish to find its stem broken and the 
blossom gone. But unto faith, eagle-eyed be- 
yond mental vision, and winged, to mount like 
the shining lark over the fading rainbow unto 
the blue heaven, even this is touchingly lovely. 

"The child's earthly ministry was well done; 
for the rose does its work as grandly in blossom 
as the vine with its fruit. And having helped 
to sanctify and lift heavenward the very hearts 
that broke at its farewell, it has gone from this 
troublesome sphere, ere the winds chilled or the 
rains stained it, leaving the world it blessed and 
the skies through which it passed still sweet with 
its lingering fragrance, to its glory as an ever- 
unfolding flower in the blessed garden of God. 
Surely, prolonged life on earth hath no boon 
like this. For such mortal loveliness to put on 
immortality; to rise from the carnal with so 



SYMPATHY, TRUE AND FALSE. 69 

little memory of earth that the mother's cradle 
seemed to have been rocked in the house of 
'many mansions;' to have no experience of a 
wearied mind and chilled affections, but from 
a child's arch-angelic intellect to be raptured 
as a blest bat>e through the gates of Paradise, — 
ah, this is better than to watch, as an old 
prophet, for the car of fire in the Valley of 
Jordan. 

"Surely God is wise in all his works; and 
even amid our tears will we rejoice, in this 
harvest-feast, that among us, as elsewhere, he 
gathers so largely 'the flowers in their season.' 

"And as of flowers, so of fruits in their 
order and after their kind, 'each cometh in his 
season.' Some fruits ripen early. Scarcely has 
the delicious June poured its full glory over the 
earth ere some rare and delicious species are 
already ripened. And some ripen later. There 
are trees that do not even blossom until mid- 
summer; there are fruits that remain hard and 
unsavory until God shakes them in the wild 
autumnal wind, and treats them with the dis- 
tressful ministry of frost. And so it is in the 
spiritual world — souls develop and mature dif- 
ferently. Some are ready for gathering at life's 
early Summer; some come not to the earing 
till the 'time of the latter rain.' And God 



yo INSIDE THE GATES. 

watches carefully that 'each shall come in his 
season.' We indeed talk of the ' untimely 
deaths' of young Christians, removed too early 
from spheres of usefulness, as if the omniscient 
husbandman did not know when his immortal 
grapes are purple, and his corn in the ear. 
Surely God does the whole thing wisely, gath- 
ering each spiritual growth just as it comes into 
condition for its immortal uses." 

O, thought beautiful and comforting. Death 
is not destruction, but harvesting: the gathering 
from fields of mortal tillage ripe fruits in their 
season. And why, then, should our harvest- 
feast be sad over garnered immortality? Why 
should the sweetly tolling bell, filling the trou- 
bled earthy airs with a gentle sound, so startle 
and appall the trustful spirit? God strengthen 
your faith so as to behold this mysterious thing 
in a light from heaven, that its dark veil shall 
seem transparent, and a face with soft eyes shall 
look forth, loving and bright as the face of an 
angel. 

No. Death is not destruction. Death is not 
even decay. Death is harvesting. Hear, ye 
parents, from whose households sweet children 
have been rudely parted, hear ye this: ''The 
beloved has gone down into his garden to gather 
lilies. " Ye children, who have lost revered 



SYMPATHY, TRUE AND FALSE. 71 

parents, and whose life is chilled in the shadow 
of that dread " thing, orphanage, hear ye this : 
" As a shock of corn cometh in in his season, so 
shall matured souls be gathered in the garner 
of God." 

O yes; my dear children and yours are only 
transplanted flowers. In the Summer-land of 
immortality they bloom, never to fade. 

" Not lost! O no; not lost, nor dead. 

Immortals can not die ; 
They only quit their crumbling cage, 

For mansions in the sky. 
Beyond the reach of tears and pain, 

Where death hath lost its sting, 
Within the realms of endless day, 

They fold their weary wing." 




»pfr-Jt% 



;< Light to thy path, bright creature ; I would charm 
Thy being, if I could, that it might be 
Ever as thou dreamest, and flow on, 
Thus innocent and blissful, to heaven. " 



" 'T is granted, and no plainer truth appears, 
Our most important are our earliest years ; 
The mind, impressible and soft with ease, 
Imbibes and copies what she hears and sees, 
And through life's labyrinth holds fast the clew 
That education gives her, false or true. 
Plants raised with tenderness are seldom strong; 
Man's coltish disposition asks the thong ; 
And without discipline the favored child, 
Like a neglected forester, runs wild." 




IV. 




«? 



sfe 



AM now going to ask. you to turn 
your thoughts from the child dead 
to the child living and moving about 
in this world. We need not forget the 
dear departed ones whom we have laid 
away in dreamless and unbroken sleep. 
Their memories are too precious to us 
ever to pass away from the recollection. 
But we know that our children dead are 
safe. Our children living are not free 
from danger, even with all the protection 
of parental love, and the hallowed influ- 
ences of home to shield them. 

The little child in your family may be pure 
and innocent to-day ; but, alas ! to-morrow the 
mark of sin may be on its soul, and as it grows 
up to manhood or womanhood it may be scarred 
all over with sin. 

75 



76 INSIDE THE GATES. 

I have somewhere read of a famed artist, 
who in his youth conceived the idea of painting 
a picture of innocence. He therefore went to 
to the nursery, and made a sketch of a little 
child at its mother's knee in the attitude of 
prayer. It was a beautiful conception ; and he 
wrought out the picture and placed it on the 
walls of his studio, and called it " Innocence/ ' 
The years passed by, and the artist grew to be 
old; but ere he would put away his brush and 
pallet forever he desired to paint a picture of 
guilt. Then he went, not to the nursery, but 
to the prison; and there, on the floor of a 
gloomy cell, lay a wretched man in chains. 
His eyes glared, and he cursed all who came 
near him. The artist made his cartoon, wrought 
out his picture, and hung it beside the beautiful 
picture of "Innocence." So "Innocence" and 
"Guilt" hung side by side— the one in all its 
purity and sweetness, the other loathsome in its 
moral deformity. The legend affirms that they 
were paintings of the same person. The guilty 
wretch on the prison-floor in chains was once 
the innocent and beautiful child of the nursery 
repeating his evening prayer with uplifted hands, 
differentiated by time and sin. 

And so it is: the child in your home to-day, 
pure and sweet as an angel, may be in the years 



child-life. yy 

to come the wayward boy or girl — yes, the 
guilty criminal in the prison-cell. These are 
startling possibilities, and should move us to 
mighty exertions to rescue the innocent one 
from its possible perils. 

I am a firm believer in the possibility of 
saving- all, or nearly all, of the children. I say 
nearly all; for I have known spme parents who 
were so judicious, good, and true, and yet whose 
children grew up so wayward and wicked, that 
I can not say all. There seem to be some 
cases of such entire moral perversion that one 
gets a very strong argument from them in sup- 
port of the doctrine of total depravity. Then, 
I say nearly all — at least vastly more than are 
saved. 

Let me now inquire, what is a child? If we 
may get the answer from the way so many 
people treat their children, then a child is a 
little living being who has by some means stum- 
bled into existence. A being with a pair of 
feet to run in all sorts of paths, according to its 
own will; a being with a pair of hands to work 
good or evil, as it pleases ; a being with a pair 
of eyes to see whatever sights come in its way, 
taking note many times of the inconsistencies of 
its elders; a pair of ears that gather up the 
sounds that fall upon them, flashing their im- 



78 INSIDE THE GATES. 

pressions home to the heart; a being for years 
subject to the will or caprices of its elders, 
whose influence may cause it to grow up to the 
perfection of manhood or womanly virtue, or 
which may burrow its way into the earth, and 
become earthly, sensual, devilish. 

At the very basis of all education, moral and 
intellectual, there must be a proper understand- 
ing of child-nature, or child-life. Our business, 
as parents and teachers, is to take the child as 
it is, and shape its being. A child, then, is an 
ungrown, undeveloped man or woman. Let me 
illustrate : The little tree in your garden is only 
a couple of feet in height; it is held in the 
earth by only a few small and tender rootlets; 
its bark is thin and delicate; its branches are 
easily bent or broken. The winds could easily 
push it over, or a passing cart-wheel crush it. 
And yet our little tree is perfect in all its parts, 
from root to topmost branch. But it can not 
endure what the old tree, with rugged limb and 
deep root, can bear easily. You know this, and 
accordingly you guard that tree most carefully 
by an inclosure of some kind. You cover the 
earth about the roots with compost, to enrich 
the soil, thus at the same time protecting them 
from Winter's frosts and Summer's heat as well. 
You watch it, and think about it, and look 



CHILD-LIFE. 79 

forward to the time when it will be full-grown, 
beautiful, and fruitful. 

Sometimes the very young tree is gnarled 
and crooked. What now does the careful nur 
seryman do? Does he cast it aside to be 
burned? Or does he gather all the gnarled 
and crooked trees together and make an orchard 
of them, unsightly and useless? No. He takes 
the little tree and prunes it; he straightens the 
crooked places, scrapes off the diseased parts, 
takes special care of it, supports its tender 
stem and weak branches, with intelligent refer- 
ence to the nature of the tree. By and by it 
becomes fully grown, and by its beauty and 
symmetry amply repays the husbandman for 
all the care he has bestowed upon it. 

Like the little tree in the garden, the child 
in the family is very tender and susceptible. 
It is not very deep-rooted, as the thousands of 
little graves scattered over all the world abun- 
dantly attest. These little moral trees are very 
easily pushed over by the winds of disease or 
the wheels of harsh treatment and neglect. 
They are sensitive, the bark is easily abraded, 
the branches are readily bent, their powers of 
endurance are comparatively small; so they 
must be watched and protected, and receive 
the most constant and intelligent care. 



8o INSIDE THE GATES. 

But there are some gnarled and crooked 
children in this moral garden. What, I ask, is 
our duty toward them? Shall they be per- 
mitted to grow up in their perversity, dwarfed 
souls, a blot upon the age in which they live? 
Why not do with them as the gardener does 
with the little trees under his care? It is cer- 
tain, however, that with the tree much depends 
upon the soil in which it is planted. It is 
equally true that much depends upon the home 
where the child-tree has taken root, and is 
destined to grow up. 

I think, if you will carefully study the child, 
you will find that it possesses all the faculties 
of the full-grown man or woman. You will 
discover there memory, will, and judgment, 
though with less of strength than the adult 
possesses. The strongest of the three is usually 
the will; and it should be strong in child or 
adult, for it is the motive-power of being. .All 
it needs is proper education. A weak engine in 
a ship would be no more deplorable than a weak 
will in a child. It is no disparagement if your 
child has a strong will; only train it. That 
willy in after-life, may carry its possessor over 
difficulties that otherwise would be insurmount- 
able, and away from temptations that might 
prove damning. 



CHILD-LIFE. 8 1 

Again, the child soon shows that it has the 
power of perception. The first time it opens 
its eyes it perceives something, and receives an 
impression. Then it begins to conceive ideas. 
Thought comes to its mind through the eye and 
ear. Thought is to the child's mind what food 
is to the stomach. The one stimulates the 
digestive organs, the other the mind's organs. 
These mental powers act on the thought, and 
new ideas are brain-born; ideas of relation, 
which come not of the senses. The child is a 
thinker, a reasoner, almost as soon as it begins 
to live. 

11 Thoughts upon thoughts, a countless throng, 
Rush, bearing countless thoughts along." 

The child grows to manhood as the years go 
by, and these thoughts become the principles 
and theories of the man — "the child is father 
of the man" — thoughts which rule empires, 
giving joy or sorrow to millions of mankind. 

Furthermore, the child has a conscience, and 
it is naturally disposed to be religious. This 
moral determinative faculty is part and parcel 
of our nature. The child is therefore a perfect 
being as it comes from the hand of its Creator. 
It is a miniature man or woman. I have in my 
microscopical collection many pictures which 
are so infinitesimal that they are invisible to 



82 INSIDE THE GATES. 

the unassisted eye ; but under the glass they are 
perfect and beautiful. Look at the child. It is 
little, almost nothing, in the estimation of many ; 
but turn on it the glass of the Gospel, and it 
rises up into beautiful and perfect proportions. 
"Except ye be converted, and become as little 
children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom 
of heaven. " Such is the estimate which Jesus 
places upon the little child. 

The child is an imaginative being. Its little 
life is largely one of fancy. It plays school and 
visit ; it converts a chair into a table, a chip into , 
a dish, the window-sill into a piano, and a 
bunch of rags into a doll. It holds conversa- 
tions with unseen companions, it assumes gov- 
ernment over them, and in a thousand ways 
contrives to keep itself busy. Thus all these 
infantile activities are but the first outgoings of 
manhood and womanhood, the beginnings of 
real life. 

The child's mind is also susceptible to all 
kinds of impressions. It has been compared to a 
clean sheet of paper to be written upon. And O, 
how sadly is the page spoiled sometimes by un- 
skillful hands, and what fearful blots often mar 
and disfigure a whole life! Childhood is the 
time when the character is most easily warped 
or molded. It is then that the greatest acquire- 



CHILD-LIFE. 83 

» 
ments of the whole life are made. The first 

five or six years of every child's life are the 
most important of its whole being. Hence, we 
see the demand for wise and careful training — 
that which includes patience, forbearance, and 
love. Character of the better kind is of slow 
growth ; but its beginning is in infancy. Pre- 
cocity is to be dreaded. Too much brilliancy 
may soon go out in an eclipse. Bear with the 
little struggling soul. Help, with a smile and a 
kind word, the little pilgrim in its journey. Do 
not make the mistake of expecting that the 
little tender mind will go at one full bound up 
to the heights where you now stand. That 
summit is gained only step by step. 

But I must again refer to my tree. A little 
tree in the garden may be very easily warped. 
That which was trim and beautiful may become 
crooked, and if left to grow up in that condition 
will be deformed through its whole life. 

Nature has her laws and penalties, and they 
will be respected. The crimes of a boy may be 
the moral ruin of the man. We write our own 
histories, and preach our own funeral sermons. 

"The rolling rock leaves its scratches on the 
mountain, the river its channel in the soil, the 
animal its bones in the stratum of rock, the 
fern and leaf their modest epitaphs in the coal. 



84 INSIDE THE GATES. 

The falling drop makes its sculpture in the sand 
or the stone. Not a foot steps into the snow, 
or along the ground, but prints in characters 
more or less lasting a map of its march. Every 
act of the man inscribes itself on the memories 
of his fellows, as well as in his own face. The 
air is full of sounds, the sky of tokens; the 
ground is all memoranda and signatures, and 
every object is covered over with hints which 
speak to the intelligent." 

Little Things. 

Not less surely do little things in a child's 
life influence its future. A blow undeserved, a 
cold turning away from its childish questions, a 
want of sympathy in its troubles, may send it 
away into solitude and grief with a wonder in 
its mind what life means, and for what purpose 
it was created. A child's trouble is not a small 
thing to its sensitive soul. It comes to you 
with tearful eyes, and a heart throbbing with 
distress, because of some little hurt, or the loss 
of a penny, or the breaking of a cherished toy. 
It is indeed a trifling thing to you, the mature 
man or woman; but to the little one it is an 
appalling disaster, a grief that beclouds the 
young soul, and hangs a dark curtain before the 
brightness of future days. And yet, because it 



CHILD-LIFE. 85 

is so trifling an affair to you, you turn coldly 
away from the little grieved soul, to whom the 
sorrow seems intolerable. O, remember that 
the dear children need sympathy, just as much 
as you do when great waves of anguish sweep 
over your soul; and when the sympathy of 
friends comes into your heart it is balm to the 
wounds and healing to the sorrows. 

I have somewhere read a story, in which is 
a lesson of value to parents and teachers. One 
of the Roman kings, in pursuing some of his 
military schemes, had occasion to cross the 
Adriatic Sea. No other opportunity occurring, 
he hired a simple boatman to row him across. 
In the midst of the sea a storm arose, and the 
boatman was alarmed, and relaxed his efforts. 
But the future emperor of Rome cried out, 
11 Courage, my man, courage! you carry Caesar 
and his fortunes." 

O father, mother, teacher in the Sunday or 
day school, do you ever yield to discourage- 
ments because of the obstacles that surround 
you? Do not forget that in the mind of your 
child or pupil there is more than the fortunes 
of Caesar. That little spirit is destined to live 
on and on, through all the years of God ! Your 
hand and voice are giving direction to a soul 
which is to outlast twinkling star or blazing 



86 INSIDE THE GATES. 

sun. The mother molds the child; her hand 
shapes its destiny. 

" Like wax, she can mold it in the form she will; 
What she writes on the tablet remains there still. 
And an angel's work is not more high 
Than aiding to form one's destiny." 

The great mistake of the world has been that 
the child has been too much overlooked and 
undervalued. There is a strong tendency in 
human nature generally to overlook little things, 
forgetting that law of the universe, that great 
things are made up of these. The grass, which 
carpets the earth in beauty, does not come 
forth in a moment by some fiat of the Creator; 
but it rises to the surface as gently as the com- 
ing of the morning — it comes up, blade by 
blade, till the hill-tops grow green in the soft 
Spring air, and the meadow smiles in verdant 
beauty. The rain, by which God brings the 
harvest, does not fall in a deluge upon the 
the thirsty ground; but drop by drop it comes 
on the mountain and valley, till the dry land 
becomes a pool, and in the desert there are 
springs of water. The great mountains, whose 
summits arrest the clouds in their course, have 
been built up grain by grain, and rock by rock, 
O, these little things ! The nerve in the tooth, 
which is almost microscopic in its minuteness, 



CHILD-LIFE. 87 

can yet cause your whole body to quiver with 
pain. So the mind of the child expands, little 
by little. Day added to day makes up life, 
pulse-throb by pulse-throb, we reach our three- 
score years and ten. 

Patience. 

The little child needs your patient care. 
Patience is one of the cardinal virtues of the 
household, and your little blue-eyed boy has 
been sent down to develop in you that virtue. 
The little fellow annoys you sometimes by his 
efforts to "live and learn." He wants to know 
what this strange world means, what it is for, 
and how to manage it. It looks pretty large in 
his little eyes ; but there is a feeling in his 
baby-breast that he is equal to the emergency, 
and if he can have fair play he will master the 
situation, or die in the attempt. He does not 
mean to torment you, weary mother, but he 
does, or you make torment out of it; just as 
Christian people sometimes convert mere trials 
over into temptations, and that which God 
meant as a blessing becomes a curse. No; he 
does not even mean to try you. It is his way, 
that is all. He wakes you up before daybreak 
by jumping and frolicking; he wants to be 
dressed, and ready for business. He is afraid 



88 INSIDE THE GATES. 

the world will not go on right unless he looks 
after things himself. He thinks every thing 
in the universe was made for him, and he is 
about right. He wants something to eat, and 
can not wait very patiently for the clock hands 
to get round to a certain mark on the dial- 
plate; and then, before grace is half said, he 
utters an emphatic "Amen," to hurry up mat- 
ters. He gets his hands into the batter, and 
then wipes then! on his bib or your dress, 
whichever is most convenient. Your head 
aches, but his does not; and he is so hungry! 
He eats, and then starts out contentedly on a 
voyage of discovery. He finds your work- 
basket, which to him is a perfect curiosity-shop. 
He pushes your needles away down into the 
cushion, where neither he nor you can find 
them. He is studying the interior of the thing, 
taking his first lesson in geology. He unwinds 
your spools, and gets tangled in the threads. 
These tangled threads may be a prophecy of his 
future calling, when, as some great and learned 
divine, he may be called upon to unravel the 
tangled threads of theology. There are the 
the sharp, bright scissors, which he drops down 
into the register, greatly delighted to hear them 
go rattling away down the tin pipes. Your 
thimble he throws out of the window; the 



CHILD-LIFE. 89 

button-box he empties on the floor, and get- 
ting down among them, fills his hands with 
the curious things, and wonders and wonders 
where they all came from, and who was so 
good as to make all these things for his 
amusement. 

All this is trying to the mother's patience; 
but it is just the way the dear boy learns that 
a woman's work-basket generally has in it only 
a few select articles, and that they lie there in 
the most orderly manner! This is the process 
by which he learns that the inside of a pin- 
cushion is usually full of needles ! and that 
every body, even a mischievous child, may get 
tangled with the affairs of this world sometimes. 
He learns in this way that the register-pipe is a 
good receptacle for scissors; for then he knows 
just where they are, and it will not be necessary 
for mamma to hunt a whole forenoon for them. 
When he threw the thimble out of the window 
and saw it roll away, he got his first lesson 
in distance and gravitation; while the button- 
box could only serve to impress him with the 
simplicity of the age into which he is happily 
born; 

He must be active every moment, when he 
is awake. If he does not obey this dictum of 
his nature he will die, or lapse into idiocy. 



9<3 INSIDE THE GATES. 

Now, you have three things to do. Study his 
nature, direct his activities into the right chan- 
nel, and bear with him. Some one has said: 
"If you put your child into a room full of 
ordinary matters, and do not give him an 
abundant supply of things which are his own, 
you need no more marvel that he should be 
mischievously busy, in touching what he ought 
not, than that he should eat what he ought not, 
when he is hungry, and you put him where he 
can get only improper viands." 

Let the dear boy die, and then, as you look 
back upon his young life, you will wonder that 
you were ever impatient. Could you have him 
back again, to press once more to your heart, 
you would willingly suffer any thing for his 
sake. But he is gone, and, a bright cherub, he 
is safe inside the gates of heaven. 

" Sweet, laughing child! The cottage-door 

Stands free and open now; 
But O, its sunshine gilds no more 

The gladness of thy brow. 
Thy merry step hath passed away ; 
Thy laughing sport is hushed for aye. 

Thy mother by the fireside sits, 

And listens for thy call; 
And slowly, slowly, as she knits, 

Her quiet tear-drops fall. 
Her little hindering thing is gone, 
And undisturbed she may work on." 



CHILD-LIFE. 91 

Courage. 

People often seem to forget that children are 
timid. Some are more so than others, it is 
true. The child is generally conscious of its 
weakness and need of support. But the mis- 
take is often made of driving the little one to 
obedience by exciting its fears, telling it stories 
of ' l ghosts " and 4 ' hobgoblins ' ' and ' ' black- 
man.'' Charles Lamb puts on record the testi- 
mony that his whole life was marred by the 
foolish stories told him about ghosts and witches 
when he was a child. He says: "The nirfit- 
time solitude and the dark were my hell. I 
never laid my head on my pillow, I suppose, 
from the fourth to the seventh year of my age, 
so far as my memory serves things so long ago, 
without an assurance which realized its own 
prophecy of seeing some frightful specter.'' 
A similar experience had Jean Paul Richter. 
"From hearing ghost-stories around the fire- 
side," he says, "I went to bed, and lay with 
my head under the bedclothes, in a cold agony 
of fear of ghosts, and saw in the darkness the 
lightning from the cloudy heaven of spirits, and 
it seemed to me that man himself was spun 
round by spirit-worms." 

Fear may be pushed so far in the mind of 



92 INSIDE THE GATES. 

a child as to unsettle reason, and drive it into 
idiocy. The wild shriek may be prolonged 
through all the years of its life. An eminent 
writer says: "Fear enfeebles and distorts the 
understanding more than all the other emotions 
of the mind; but terror, which is sudden or in- 
tensified fear, for the time paralyzes the under- 
standing, and may even annihilate it altogether. 
One shock of terror may produce a state of 
mind which is ever afterward susceptible of the 
same agony; and from such a time fear is never 
absent." 

It is a sad spectacle, in either the school or 
family, to see a timid child tormented with 
threats of punishment. And yet it is no un- 
common thing for the little, bashful, distrustful 
child to be called up to recite a lesson, or do 
some other duty, and for it to be so overcome 
with a dread fear of the rod that its little frame 
will be shaken with nervous tremors. When 
children are timid, their fears must be dealt 
with in a cheerful manner. The child needs 
assurance, which comes from without and is 
based on experience. We protect our young 
trees from the winds by proper supports; but 
the tender children of our households are ex- 
pected to grow up against innumerable odds, 
and come out safely at last. O, if people only 



CHILD-LIFE. 93 

understood the children, what sin and wretched- 
ness this world might be spared! 

The very best remedy for timidity in the 
child's mind is knowledge. Ignorant people 
are generally cowardly, because they are super- 
stitious. To cure your boy of " being afraid in 
the dark," do not put hickory on his back, but 
put knowledge into his head. A good book on 
science or history will infuse more courage of 
the genuine sort into a boy's mind than all the 
rattans in the world. 

Then there is the detestable practice of 
scolding, which is quite too common. You 
may as well expect to improve the growth of a 
rose-bush by throwing stones at it as to bring 
up a child properly under the influence of a 
scolding tongue. If you want your children to 
be disregardful of what you say, just open your 
mouth like a hydrant, and let a stream of scold- 
ing run on their ears continually. The very 
best way to irritate the nerves, sour the temper, 
and make your child thoroughly hate home and 
you, is to scold it frequently; the surest way to 
make it bad is to scold it. We should talk to 
our children, and thus cultivate their reasoning 
powers. Thus may we make them an orna- 
ment to us, and a blessing to the world. 

Mothers, I speak to you particularly; for the 



94 INSIDE THE GATES. 

destiny of the child is largely in your hands. 
Richter says, "Miserable indeed is the man for 
whom his own mother has not made all other 
mothers venerable." Your life should be such 
that in after years your child can point to no 
word or act not becoming the relation you 
sustain. Thus will your memory be most 
precious. 

" O heart, that fainteth underneath thy load 
Of toil and care, along life's rugged road, 
List to the gentle music, soft and sweet, 
The music of the restless pattering feet. 
5 T is thine to lead them into pathways bright, 
*T is thine to guide the little feet aright : 
So let thy weary heart find sweet repose, 
Thy toil and anxious care the Father knows." 

There is nothing on earth so beautiful as the 
household on which love forever smiles, and 
where religion walks, a counselor and friend. 
No cloud can darken it; for its twin stars are 
centered in the soul. No storm can make it 
tremble; for it has a heavenly support and a 
heavenly anchorage. The home circle that is 
surrounded by such influences comes nearest 
the joys of heaven of any in this world. 

If the mother has the responsibility, hers is 
also the deep joy of maternity, the bliss of 
giving to the world an immortal. 

Children ! They are a sacred happiness. 



CHILD-LIFE. 95 

What gentle influences they shed! Their un- 
conscious smiles and sweet tenderness have won 
many a soul from sin, and cheered many a 
despairing heart in life's rough journey. The 
only bright spot in the life of many a miserable, 
neglected, and ill-treated wife is her child. Its 
sweet presence is a daily benediction on her 
heart. The cloud that settles about her dwell- 
ing is spanned by this one beautiful rainbow. 
On that otherwise darkened soul this watch- 
light ever burns.; and they who would tear from 
a mother's throbbing breast the child of her 
love commit by that act a horrid blasphemy 
against nature, and do violence to God's own 
decrees, by lifting away from that heart the 
consecrated instruments of its power. 

Then make your child's life bright and 
joyous; consecrate it to the service of God, 
and ever give it the stimulus of a noble and 
pure example. 




>ph-§uHuip t 



" I SAW a tiny plant, in tender green, 

Grow, leaf by leaf, till, robed in velvet sheen, 
From out its heart there burst a blossom fair, 
That shed its fragrance on the Summer air. 

I saw a child, that by its mother knelt, 

And prayed, 'Our Father.' Then and there it felt 

The precious kindlings of a mighty love, 

That drew its dawning infant thoughts above. 

And one by one they went, the golden years; 
The mother's spirit fled to radiant spheres; 
But, with glad banner of the Cross unfurled, 
Her child went forth a man, to bless the world." 






CJl^ild- dulttufe. 



F the child is, what I have stated it 
cJLf to be in the preceding chapter, an 
embodiment of all the affections and 
powers of the adult, existing in an unde- 
veloped, but developing, stage, character- 
ized by tenderness, sensitiveness, impress- 
ibility, then the question of its culture is 
one easily solved. It is the simplest 
problem before the mind of the Christian 
world this day. 

I admit there is more to do in the 
training of a child than in the training of 
the little tree in the garden. The tree is pass- 
ive in your hands — the child is active. But 
then the tree, on the other hand, can do noth- 
ing for itself — the child can do so much. The 
tree is shaped by the laws of vegetable life, 
has no will — no conscience. The child has a 

99 



A 



100 INSIDE THE GATES. 

life of its own, and this life is exhibited in its 
will and its conscience. 

But, I say, the question of child-culture is a 
simple one. I do not mean by this that the 
child is simple. I should say, rather, its psy- 
chological organism is complex, but simple in a 
sense, because it can be understood by us; for 
we ourselves have been children, and know of 
the thoughts and feelings of childhood by our 
own experience. The most complex piece of 
machinery may be very simple to the practical 
mechanic, because he has studied its mechan- 
ism, though very complex to others. Each plant 
in the greenhouse, while obeying the general 
laws of vegetable growth, yet has a nature pecul- 
iar to itself, and needs care and culture accord- 
ingly. So must every individual child be studied. 
For example: some children need to be held 
back; their brains are too active, the nervous 
force is expended too rapidly. The brain liter- 
ally consumes the body. Send such a child off 
into the country, away into quiet, and let its 
brain rest and its body grow strong. Take a 
plant out of the greenhouse into the field, and 
in less than a week it will begin to put on a 
different kind of growth and verdure. And 
what is true of a plant is equally true of a 
child. Take one of your sickly girls from the 



CHILD-CULTURE. 101 

crowded city in August, and let her climb the 
hills and roam through the valleys, and she will 
soon become as sprightly as a deer, and as 
fresh and rosy as June. Some one has said 
that a dose of good country air is better than 
all the medicines in the world. 

The characteristic of another child is its 
acute sensitiveness. It will droop under a sharp 
word, like a delicate plant before a blazing fire. 
Another child is obstinate, and will be satisfied 
only w r hen carrying out its own will. 

Some children are naturally frolicsome. They 
go bounding about like rubber-balls, upsetting 
some things and breaking others, and teasing 
every body with whom th£y come in contact. 
Then there are the dull children, whose minds 
expand slowly. But give them time, and deal 
with them carefully — the mind that unfolds 
slowly may yet open and be brilliant. We are 
told in classic story of one Herodes, who, to 
overcome the extraordinary dullness of his son 
Atticus, educated along with him twenty-four 
little slaves of his own age, upon whom he 
bestowed the names of the Greek letters, so 
that young Atticus might be compelled to learn 
the alphabet as he played with his comrades. 

But all children are not really dull who may 
seem to be so. The mind machinery is all 



102 INSIDE THE GATES. 

there, but in partial repose. And then, again, 
there is often a sub-current in the mind, not 
obvious to the gaze of the world: 

" The wealth of the ocean lies fathoms below 
The surface that sparkles above." 

But what if your child does seem to be dull ? 
I have seen it stated that Sir Isaac Newton, 
whose name is associated with the constella- 
tions, the discoverer of gravitation, was a dull 
boy. Sheridan, the orator and statesman, was 
pronounced by his teachers an " incorrigible 
dunce." His mother — and a* mother generally 
looks upon her child with a feeling of charity — 
said he was "the most stupid of all her sons." 
Goldsmith, Shakespeare, Gibbon, and Dryden 
were all of them of an inferior standard of intel- 
ligence in their boyhood. When Berzelius, the 
great Swedish chemist, left the preparatory 
school for the university, he went bearing the 
credentials, "Indifferent in behavior, and of 
doubtful hope;" and when he was nineteen 
years old he was taunted by his classmates with 
the question whether he understood the differ- 
ence between a laboratory and a kitchen. Sir 
Walter Scott had the unenviable reputation of 
owning the thickest skull in the school which 
he attended when a child. Milton and Swift 



CHILD-CULTURE. 1 03 

• 
are said to have been dull boys. The celebrated 
divines, Scott and Clarke, who have won fame 
the world over for their learned commentaries 
on the Scriptures, were pronounced positively 
stupid in their youth, and were looked upon by 
their parents with but little hope for the future. 

The fireside is the child's first seminary, and 
is of infinite importance in its life. It is the 
universal school of infancy; and the education 
there received is woven in with the very woof 
of its being, and gives form and color to the 
texture of its whole after-life. 

And, furthermore, you can not tell just what 
your dear child may become. With what an 
utter disregard of what the world calls wealth, or 
position in society, our Heavenly Father scatters 
the priceless gifts of genius among his children! 
The great poet or preacher, the illustrious 
statesman or scientist, senator or President, is 
as likely to go forth from the humble dwelling 
of the day-laborer across the way as from the 
princely palaces of wealth and fashion. He who 
shall wear upon his brow a nation's honors, he 
whose voice shall hold and sway tens of thou- 
sands of his kind, may this day be unconsciously 
digging in some field, unnoticed and unknown by 
the great world. In your own quiet and simple 
home, in your Sunday-school class, dear teacher. 



104 INSIDE THE GATES. 

is some little boy, who may one day be a great 
and powerful man, whose words and deeds shall 
affect the destiny of millions of his race. 
Mother, teacher, is there any stimulus to your 
heart in that thought? 

But that is not all. I do not approve of 
telling boys in the Sunday-school that they 
should be wise and good, for some of them may 
be called to positions of honor, such as Gov- 
ernor or President. This is a deplorable mis- 
take. There are higher inducements than that 
to be good. Teach the boy to be a wise and 
good man, whether it be stone-mason, merchant, 
President, or any thing else. 

" Honor and shame from no condition rise; 
Act well your part — there all the honor lies." 

The real object of our education is to give 
the young mind resources that will endure as 
long as life endures, to establish habits of 
thought and action that will run through its 
whole being. Education that will render sick- 
ness tolerable, solitude pleasant, and life itself 
dignified and useful, is the kind to be sought. 
No other culture is in accordance with the na- 
ture and demands of human existence. The 
education of the ball-room, "the last new 
novel" — the world, in short — will not do this, 



CHILD-CULTURE. 105 

because it does not meet the inevitable facts in 
the life of man. 

In all religious training, the child should ever 
be taught the difference between a mere out- 
ward form of goodness and the genuine thing 
itself. A child that hears its mother tell her 
callers she is so glad to see them, and then, 
when they are well out of the gate, hears her 
say that she was annoyed with them; the boy 
who hears his father boast of how he took advan- 
tage of a neighbor in a bargain; children who 
hear their parents tell in prayer-meeting how 
much they love God, and then never hear a 
word addressed to him in prayer, or about him 
in conversation, at home, from one week to an- 
other — who in meeting talk of going to heaven, 
and then all through the week plunge deeper 
and deeper into the world, — such children have 
but little to encourage them in the development 
of real heart -goodness. That they perceive 
these inconsistencies, when they exist, is very 
certain. 

Real goodness is in the heart, or it has no 
substance. It can not be counterfeited success- 
fully. The culture of the little child must em- 
brace this. It must be taught to be unselfish, 
generous, self-sacrificing, not for the purpose of 
winning applause, but because it is right to be 



106 INSIDE THE GATES. 

so. I am reminded of an Oriental tale, told by 
Lord Bacon, where a cat was changed into a 
lady, and behaved very lady-like, until a mouse 
ran through the room, when she sprang down 
upon her hands and chased it. So with chil- 
dren; if their goodness is only an outward 
thing, when temptations come they will down 
and follow them. Give them right notions and 
sound principles, and they will be firm. In 
after-life the waves of affliction or sin may beat 
around them, but they will stand serene amid 
them all, 

" Firm as the surge-repelling rock." 

It must be remembered that parental love 
does not preclude correction. The tenderest 
love may find expression in the rod — the rod as 
a last resort, however. The parent who will 
allow a child to drift off into wrong, without 
correction, is doing an injury which time can not 
repair. "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, 
and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. ,, 
The child that the parent truly loves should be 
corrected, if correction is needed. Government 
is an absolute necessity, and no family should 
be allowed to grow up in disregard of it. The 
young mind must be taught law and order as a 
first requisite. 

Let the child be left unrestrained, undisci- 



CHILD-CULTURE. 107 

plined, and yet be surrounded by all manner of 
inducements to bad living. Let it grow up 
thus, fall into evil ways, commit criminal acts, 
and in process of time land in jail, then our 
concern for it begins; then we begin to talk 
about its training and discipline. But it is too 
late. The habits have become fixed, the char- 
acter is formed, the criminal has been made, 
and reform is now at least doubtful. A man 
can not live his life backward. O, this letting a 
child get well under way toward absolute ruin 
before you take any decided steps to bring him 
up right! There is where so many fail. Many 
a parent has cried out, in bitterness of soul, 
"O, that I had begun earlier!" 

Then, I say, begin earlier to shape the young 
tree in your nursery into usefulness and beauty. 
Remember that every day which passes by ren- 
ders the chances of success less and less. Life 
can not be unlived, nor can habits once formed 
be easily uprooted. 

;< Too late ! The curse of life ! Could we but rend 
The thoughts that ever bleed, 
How oft are found, 
Engraven deep, those words of saddest sound, 
Curse of our mortal State; 
Too late ! Too late !" 

"Father," said an Indian chief to a mission- 
ary who had come among them, "You will find 



108 INSIDE THE GATES. 

among us many old men, like myself, whose 
opinions are too confirmed to be changed. 
They will assent to almost any view you may 
advance ; but, when done, will remain unchanged 
at heart. Do not waste your time on such. 
But here are our children. Their minds are 
young and tender, and will receive any impres- 
sion you may wish to make upon them. Take 
them, and raise them as you think best." 

Dear parent, that bright-eyed boy, on whom 
you are bestowing your affections and lavishing 
your money, may either be a blessing or a curse 
to the world. He will be true or false; an 
honest man, moral, upright, and good, or given 
over to vice and its resulting degradation. Your 
sweet girl may *be wrapped about with the 
beautiful mantle of innocence and virtue; or, 
vicious and depraved, will realize from whence 
she has fallen, and then her words may be : 

" Once I was pure as the snow; but I fell, 
Fell like the snow-flakes, from heaven to hell ; 
Fell, to he trampled as filth of the street; 
Fell, to be scoffed, to be spit on, and beat ; 
Pleading, cursing, dreading to die, 
Selling my soul to whoever would buy, 
Dealing in shame for a morsel of bread ; 
Hating the living, and fearing the dead. 
Merciful God ! Have I fallen so low ? 
And yet I was once like the beautiful snow." 



CHILD-CULTURE. IO9 

Which of these shall be the fate of your 
child ? Time alone can. give the answer. This 
I do know, however: much depends upon the 
early training you bestow. These little be- 
ginnings of wrong in our children must be 
watched most carefully : for on them depends 
all the great future of their lives. 

The displacement of a little iron bolt no 
larger than your thumb may wreck a train of 
cars, and hang crape on a hundred doors. So a 
word spoken to your child at a proper time, 
and in a right manner, may save it from ruin 
of soul and body in after years. 

A child starts from its mother's door and 
takes a few steps along the busy street, noticing 
the many objects which attract its attention, 
until it falls into the drifting current of human- 
ity, and, borne onward, is soon lost to its home 
and its mother. It was charmed into forgetful- 
ness by the many strange and beautiful sights 
which met its gaze, and the many sounds that 
fell on its ear. Thus many a youth ventures 
away from the home of virtue, out into the 
world of evil, and soon finds himself charmed 
and bewildered with enchanting scenes, crowded 
forward amid the bustling throng of humanity, 
with the certain doom of God's judgment 
hanging over him. 



I IO INSIDE THE GATES. 

These, when once fully embarked in their 
downward career, are forever clamoring to be 
let alone — they do not wish to be interrupted in 
their course of folly. "There is a way which 
seemeth right unto them, but the end thereof 
are the ways of death/ ' 

Lay your hand gently on the shoulder of 
that thoughtless young man, and that equally 
thoughtless young woman, in the ball-room; 
say to them, "This is but a flowery path to 
ruin;" and they will often turn upon you with 
the bitterest invective; they will charge you 
with interfering with their private rights. The 
way they have chosen "seemeth right unto 
them." 

Go into yonder gilded saloon, and speak to 
that young man, as he raises the glass to his 
lips, and whisper to him: "Look not upon the 
wine when it is red;" "Touch not, taste not, 
handle not;" and he will be likely to revile you, 
and call .you a bigot and a meddlesome body. 

Go, stand at the door of the play-house, 
where are congregated the real pleasure-loving; 
tell them, as they enter, that their course is 
wrong, and that time thus spent is worse than 
wasted, and they will laugh you to scorn, and 
call you a fool. 

Go, place yourself by that dark passage-way, 



CHILD-CULTURE. 1 1 1 

that carries a multitude down into the cellar, 
where all the night long the dice clatter and the 
cards are shuffled and the hard earnings are 
wasted. Tell these men they are going straight 
to destruction, and then beseech them, with the 
utmost tenderness, to turn away from the 
haunts of vice and come to the house of 
prayer, and they may heap curses on you. Not 
all will do this. Some will be touched, and can 
be thus won, even from the lowest degradation 
into which sin has plunged them. 

" Some word may lift the shadow from the past, 
So long by sin and bitter shame o'ercast, 
And show in early life some sunny spot 
Where still a mother's prayers are imforgot." 

But the cry of the amusement-loving world is, 
"Let us alone." 

God's prophets, in the olden times, were 
always a trouble to evil-doers. None are so 
blind as those whom sin hath blinded. The 
wandering child is lost because it moves on 
thoughtlessly with the crowd, — so our young 
men and women press onward with the multi- 
tude whose feet are swift to destruction. 

It is always safe for us to make the certain- 
ties of life govern the uncertainties. We ought 
to prepare for w r hat we know it will be our lot 
to pass through. While we can imagine a 



112 INSIDE THE GATES. 

thousand things which may or may not happen 
in our lives, there are yet some things which 
must occur. We must die. No one pleads 
ignorance of this. Therefore, in view of death, 
how ought we to live? If you were doomed to 
die next week, and your child were standing by 
your side, to receive words of counsel that 
should govern and shape its future life, would 
you advise that child to follow a course of 
crime? Surely, you would not. Would you, 
then, advise it to engage in. whatever in your 
judgment would lead to crime? Most assuredly 
not. You would not admonish it to be miserly 
or selfish, for these would make it unhappy. If, 
then, theater-going, dancing, card-playing, and the 
like, are allurements to crime, is it safe in any 
case to encourage them? And who denies that 
these things do lead to vice ? There is not one 
who reads this, who would not most solemnly 
counsel prayer, faith in God, holiness, and all 
other gifts and graces which are taught in 
Holy Writ. 

It is proper here for me to allude to a com- 
mon sin, that of gambling. There are some 
games that do not lead to gambling, while 
others do. I mention it, because your child must 
meet the temptation, sooner or later. Gambling 
does not often begin in the professional hall. 



CHILD-CULTURE. 1 1 3 

Its beginning is in the misapprehension of a 
moral principle. It is said that all error is per- 
verted truth. So the innocent sport of child- 
hood may be carried over to the side of wrong. 
Let two boys of tender years, in their playful 
mood, win from each other marbles in their 
game. Your brave boy, flushed with his vic- 
tory, comes home to tell you of it. You take 
no notice of it, or you dismiss it from your 
mind as only a boyish prank, quite indicative 
of his skill and smartness. 

Suppose that boy had come home and shown 
you a penny, which he had stolen from a play- 
mate or from some one's money-drawer — only a 
penny I but how shocked your feelings would 
be ! You would weep over him bitter tears, 
quite as bitter as though he had stolen a larger 
sum ; for the amount of property involved is 
not the question in your mind, but the fact 
simply that your child has been guilty of theft. 

Now, these boys are soon to be men, and 
they are even now laying the foundations of 
their future manhood, "The child is father of 
the man." The seed of morality or immorality 
is being sown in the heart-soil, and out of the 
heart proceed the issues of life. 

Then, these playful children are learning a 
lesson of wrong; for it is as wrong to gamble 



1 14 INSIDE THE GATES. 

on a small scale as on a large one; it is as 
wrong for a boy to win a marble, and keep it 
as property acquired in the game, as for the 
professional gambler to fleece his verdant victim 
out of a thousand dollars at a faro-bank. It is 
the principle, not the quantity of property, with 
which we have to do. I have known Christian 
people to defend these simple winnings because 
of their littleness, not seeing how easy it is to 
warp the moral judgment of childhood, blunt 
its moral sensibilities, and lay the foundations 
of moral ruin, by thus giving it an impetus in 
the direction of professional gambling, starting 
the soul on a career that may end in a prison- 
cell or on the gallows. 

At the very threshold of your child's life, 
teach it moral principle; for this determines its 
usefulness and happiness in after-life. . 

" A pebble in the streamlet scant 

Has changed the course of many a river ; 
The dew-drop on the baby-plant 
Has warped the giant oak forever." 

Two young men sit down to a game of cards, 
to while away the evening hours. At first they 
do not bet; but soon the interest flags. They 
then playfully wager a supper, or a sleigh-ride, 
or a bottle of wine, or something else. This 
seems quite innocent to them; but they have 



CHILD-CULTURE. 1 1 5 

now started on the road to ruin. First, a so- 
called innocent game, then a simple bet, then 
more earnest playing and deeper betting, con- 
tinued from evening to evening, from week to 
week, and month to month. Do they lose? it 
only makes them the more determined to win 
in the next game, and they play on. Winning 
stimulates the desire to win more, and gain 
larger sums. The morals are now fast degener- 
ating; the sense of right is becoming extinct. 
Conscience is being "seared over, as with a hot 
iron/' The hours which should be spent in 
the company of the good, in reading books 
that enrich the mind with thought, or in peace- 
ful slumbers are devoted to the card-table and 
its kindred evils. 

Many a young man has squandered the 
money of an employer, and gone to ruin, 
through the enticements of the gambling-table. 
A young man loses in this process, and becomes 
maddened, and then drinks to obliterate the sad 
recollections, and again plunges into vice, until 
character and all he should hold dear lie in 
hopeless ruin. You may see him in the prison, 
as he paces the narrow limits of his cell. The 
memory of all the past crowds upon his mind ; 
visions of other days are before him, when he 
was respected, loved, and honored. He looks 



1 1 6 INSIDE THE GATES. 

wildly at you. Ask him the cause, he will tell 
you, the card-table, the wine-cup, and a lack of 
proper discipline in his childhood — these have 
sent him down. 

But there is a young woman, the pride of 
some cheerful home, in whose face is the light 
of hope, and in whose step is the buoyancy of 
youth. She wins, by her purity and grace, 
some noble young man, whose life, like her 
own, is full of promise. The spell of love 
comes over them, and locks their two hearts 
into one. They enter upon life's journey, hand 
in hand. If they are careful, they may avoid 
the quicksands and dangerous places; but if 
not, their way will soon turn from the enchanted 
ground, where all is beauty and joy, to the 
deserts, where the air is heavy with poisonous 
vapors, and the deep caverns and fearful steeps 
make life a hard and joyless road. 

They make a mistake. On New- Year's Day 
she puts on her table a bottle of wine; he 
makes the mistake of drinking it. To add to 
the interest of their meetings, they play at 
cards. They do not bet, nor drink, nor revel, 
nor profane; but it becomes a habit with them. 
She watches him with her love, and says to 
herself, "If he strays, I will win him back 
again;" or she thinks one so noble as he can 



CHILD-CULTURE. 1 1 7 

not do wrong. How little of human nature 
does she know! He too feels strong in his 
manliness, and boasts of his mastery over him- 
self. Time passes away, ten or twenty years, 
and O how sad ! Years of hopes blighted ; 
years when the dense clouds of sorrow rarely 
parted for the sunlight of joy to gleam through 
them, only leaving the darkness and gloom the 
more impenetrable. O, those terrible years! 
How heavily they have dragged! What days 
of anguish! What nights of grief! What a 
strange, sad story they tell ! 

There sits, by her window yonder, a desolate 
woman. The fire that once flashed in her lus- 
trous eye has gone out. The flush on her 
cheek, that once vied in beauty with the rose, 
has faded away. That voice, once so musical, 
only sings its plaintive song of grief. That 
step, once so elastic, is slow and measured. 
The past is unforgotten ; the love, the hope, the 
promise, are yet all fresh in the mind. The 
manly step, the vow of fidelity, can not be 
lost in the dream-land of forgetfulness ; nor can 
the bridal day, the congratulations of friends, 
and the few first years of wedded life ever fade 
out of the recollection. They remain there, a 
panorama of heaven hung up in hell ! 

Where is that .once beautiful and happy girl? 



Il8 INSIDE THE GATES. 

There she sits, pale, wan, haggard, and hope- 
less. And where is he who vowed to be true 
until death ? Go, at the hour of midnight, to 
some drinking and gambling den, and you will 
find him there, "wasting his substance in 
riotous living." 

Say not, the picture is overdrawn. Such 
instances are innumerable. 

Then, parent and teacher, take some of your 
most precious time to your most precious work. 
The most important mission of your life is to 
save the child from its perils. You may have 
fewer acres of land, fewer stocks and bonds; 
but that matters nothing. You will be far hap- 
pier while you do live, and far richer in your 
dying hour, if you have the consciousness ever 
of having done your duty by your children. 




fo |p#®J Tjjiupa^ 



" My fairest child, I have no song to give you; 
No lark could pi]3e to skies so dull and gray ; 
Yet ere we part one lesson I can leave you, 

For every day : 
Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; 
Do noble things — not dream them all day long; 
And so make life, death, and that vast forever, 

One grand, sweet song." 



" There is a land, of every land the pride, 
Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside, 
Where brighter suns dispense serener light, 
And milder moons imparadise the night ; 
A land of beauty, virtue, valor, truth, 
Time-tutored age, and love-exalted youth. 

'Where shall that land, that spot of earth, be found?' 
Art thou a man ? a patriot ? Look around ! 
O, thou shalt .find, howe'er thy footsteps roam, 
That land thy country, and that spot thy home." 






VI. 



¥l\e $-pifittikl ]\ftif£efy. 



ET us now turn and look at this 
«*&/{ question of childhood and its cul- 
^ff ture in a still broader light. 

I admit that the first thing to be con- 
sidered in the matter is the safety and 
peace of the child — its personal salvation 
from sin and death ; the next thing is 
to make it useful to the world morally. 
The Church, society, the State, the world, 
all have claims upon us, and upon our 
children. 

It is one thing to train our young 
cadet in the military academy w T ith refer- 
ence to his own personal life, and another to 
make of him a good army officer; but the two 
go together. So these children in our families 
and our schools are to grow up to be common 
members of society. They are destined to take 

121 



122 INSIDE THE GATES. 

the places of the men and women who are on 
the stage of life now. I ask, How shall they 
represent us? Shall the future be more glorious 
than the past, or shall it be less so? This ques- 
tion must be answered in one way or another; 
and the home, the Sunday-school, and the 
Christian Church must render the answer. 

In looking over the list of institutions which 
every-where have foothold in civilized society, 
no one is more prominent than the Sunday- 
school, as it exists in this nineteenth century. 
And the importance which attaches to it, from 
any and every possible stand-point in which it 
may be viewed, is very great. The influence 
which it is exerting on the destiny of the world 
can scarcely be overestimated. 

And this is exactly in harmony with the 
spirit of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

That systematic Sunday-school work did not 
begin earlier in the history of the Christian 
Church is quite surprising. Away back in 
Jewish times provision was made for educating 
the young in the "statutes and ordinances of 
the Lord. ,, "And thou shalt teach them dili- 
gently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them 
when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou 
walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, 
and when thou risest up." (Deut. vi, 7.) If 



THE SPIRITUAL NURSERY. 1 23 

so much stress was laid upon child-teaching then, 
what is demanded of us in the superior light of 
this Christian age? 

Viewing the Sunday-school as one of the 
gates within whose sacred inclosure there is 
safety to the child, I have a few things to say 
about it. What I may say may not be new; 
but still it needs to be said. My book would 
be incomplete without this chapter. 

Sunday-schools began without the least idea 
on the part of their founder of the magnitude 
and grandeur of the work then and there inau- 
gurated. The little rill, which trickles from be- 
neath the rock on some mountain-side, is not a 
river; but, if you will follow it in its winding 
course onward, you will notice that it widens 
and deepens by virtue of the tributaries which 
flow into it perpetually, until it becomes a river, 
mighty in the onsweeping of its waters, a high- 
way for the commerce of a nation, and on whose 
banks great cities, with teeming populations, are 
built. So with the Sunday-school: a few poor, 
wayward, and neglected children were picked up 
on the streets of an English city, by a philan- 
thropic man. They were taken into a room, and 
instructed in secular as well as moral subjects. 

What would have been the feelings of that 
good man, Robert Raikes, the recognized 



124 INSIDE THE GATES. 

founder of modern Sunday-schools, could he on 
that morning have cast his eyes down along the 
century to follow, and seen the Sabbath-schools 
as we see them to-day? 

There are some hundreds of thousands of 
teachers devoting themselves to a work which 
would fill an angel's mind and stir an angel's 
heart. The Sunday-school teachers of the 
world are doing a work which, though to some 
it may seem quite insignificant, is far outreach- 
ing in its results, and they are doing it freely, 
"without money and without price," doing it 
as a pure labor of love. The number of chil- 
dren in all of these schools, throughout Chris- 
tendom, can scarcely be ascertained; but it runs 
up into the millions. And the day has come 
when the Sunday-school is recognized as one 
of the most potent agencies in the make-up 
of the world's moral force, not to be dispensed 
with. The first and chief agency employed in 
the world's conversion is the pulpit. Preaching 
is the "power of God unto salvation." Next 
to that, I admit, comes the Sunday-school. The 
best auxiliary which the pulpit has is the 
Sunday-school; the real sub-pastors in the 
Church are the Sunday-school teachers. 

The Sunday-school is not intended to be a 
place of ordinary secular instruction. Arithmetic, 



THE SPIRITUAL NURSERY. 1 2$ 

grammar, geology, and similar studies, are ruled 
out. The teacher may use any one or all of 
these sciences to illustrate and enforce the 
"truth as it is in Jesus;" but all other instruc- 
tion must be subordinate to the one single study, 
how to bring the child to the Savior. The 
Sunday-school is the spiritual nursery of the 
world. And here let me say that there is a 
necessity in selecting teachers for the Sunday- 
school who themselves understand the "way, 
the truth, and the life," experimentally. The 
qualifications which fit quite well for teaching in 
the week-day school are not adequate here. If 
it be a rightful demand, in these days, that he 
who preaches shall be one who has a personal 
experience of the power of Christ to save, not 
much less, if any, should it be demanded that 
they who sustain the relation of religious teach- 
ers to our children shall be living examples of 
what they teach. Mere secular learning, the 
scholarship of the schools, is not enough. Sci- 
ence, language, philosophy, art, without relig- 
ion, will only make us strong, without making 
us good. 

The Church of Christ is a spiritual body on 
earth. The Sunday-school is a component part 
of the Church, and therefore it is a spiritual 
organization. It exists to teach the pure Word 



126 INSIDE THE GATES. 

of God, just as certainly as the pulpit exists for 
that same object. "The world by wisdom knew 
not God." On this point the world has had 
ample experience. 

Nations have existed where popular intelli- 
gence abounded in a high degree, but where 
true religion was a thing unknown. These na- 
tions had martial courage, considerable refine- 
ment, and great wealth: and yet they had no 
good foundation, on which to rest securely. 
Let any people be "without hope and without 
God in the world," and they are wanting in the 
one essential element of enduring national life. 
Egypt was once the "cradle of the arts;" to-day 
it is the most sunken of all the nations. Babylon, 
once the mighty mistress of the Orient, is gone. 
Rome carried her proud eagles over the world, 
a terror to the nations; Greece had her temples 
and groves, where wise men gathered about 
them their disciples; but where are all these 
nations now? It may be said of each one, as it 
was said of each of the patriarchs, in the brief 
biography of the Bible, "And he died also." 

I write for Americans, and so wish to impress 
you somewhat, if I can, with the value of the 
Sunday-school, as an institution, to our common 
and beloved land, of which religion and educa- 
tion are the true foundation. The greatness of 



THE SPIRITUAL NURSERY. 1 27 

any country is not to be gauged by the number 
of its square miles, or the density of its popu- 
lation. These are undoubtedly elements of 
greatness; but all can see plainly that there is 
sometimes weakness in size. A ship may be so 
large as to be unmanageable ; a building may be 
so large as to be useless, and fall because it is 
too lofty. The Continent of Africa is as great 
in extent as our own, and it contains nearly one 
hundred millions of people; but in the scale of 
the nations it weighs nothing. China, with her 
uncounted hordes, is not to be thought of in 
comparison with the great Christian nations of 
the globe. So with Asia generally; its civilization 
is effete. Whatever glory it may once have had 
has indeed become dim. And yet these regions 
are unsurpassed in beauty and natural product- 
iveness, the real source of national wealth. But 
the whole is stagnant; moral death reigns; a 
blight rests on all these lands. They worship 
gods of their own carving, and they have fallen 
under the curse of God because of sin. 

The real glory of a nation lies not in its 
broad acres, not in its millions of people, but in 
its real men and women; in the virtue, intelli- 
gence, and religion of its people. 

Turn now, and look at this great country of 
ours, stretching from ocean to ocean. See these 



128 INSIDE THE GATES. 

extended valleys, these wide-reaching plains, 
these lofty mountains, these majestic rivers, 
these beautiful lakes, these vast mines of wealth, 
this wonderful soil, and these extended forests; 
and yet all these existed for ages, unknown to 
the world. Men were here, scattered over all 
this vast continent, pursuing the wild beast, 
living in huts, clad in skins; but they were men 
not much elevated above the beasts they pur- 
sued in the chase. Had the Chinaman first 
discovered this new world, and through some 
golden gateway poured a flood of Chinese pagans 
upon these shores, then our country would only 
be a second China. Had some other unchris- 
tianized people pre-empted the soil of America, 
and here built their cities and temples, then 
would this fair land of ours this day be fast 
bound in chains of moral darkness. But then 
such unchristian people are not discoverers, in 
any great sense. Such a people were here 
once, and the ruins of their temples remain; 
but they -have passed away. 

I wish to impress upon the Sunday-school 
worker, and upon the Christian parent, the 
thought of the grandeur of our mission in this 
respect; for our work has to do with the foun- 
dation of the great Republic. Look at Asia, 
crowded with people. Asia has had her vast 



THE SPIRITUAL NURSERY. 1 29 

armies, her renowned generals, her great cities, 
her philosophy, and her religion. Africa, too, 
that sunny land, had her cities, her industries, 
and her philosophies. But neither has had any 
durable life; they have slept on through the 
centuries. The China of the present day can 
not even repair the public works which old 
China had the skill and power to construct. 
The tendency of paganism is to crush out the 
moral life, and so destroy man's real power. 

Western Europe was more progressive. The 
Anglo-Saxon has always had in his veins, some- 
how, a livelier blood. He lives in a more in- 
spiring climate, or the type of his civilization is 
one which gives greater play to his powers. 
He has "sought out many inventions;" manu- 
factured, grown in intellect and heart, and still 
grows in wealth and power. The Europeans 
are descendants of Japheth. The Bible says, 
1 ' God shall enlarge Japheth ; and he shall dwell 
in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be his 
servant." The statement was not a decree, 
making the servitude of Canaan right or just; 
but rather a prophecy of a simple fact of his- 
tory. Now, in the history of this human dis- 
tribution, Japheth became the progenitor of all 
the tribes of Western Europe and Northern 
Asia, including the Armenians, Medes, Greeks, 

9 



130 INSIDE THE GATES. 

and Thracians. So God has " enlarged Japheth." 
The Anglo-Saxon race proves it. The Yankee, 
his descendant, is conquering the world. He 
is literally "dwelling in the tents of Shem," 
occupying his cities and his houses, sending his 
steamships along Asiatic rivers, and making the 
solitudes of Asiatic plains alive with the scream 
of the locomotive. Thus is the Scripture 
fulfilled. 

Europe, up to the time of the discovery of 
America, had tried almost every form of relig- 
ion, while every school of philosophy had taught 
its doctrines. Society was quite godless, so 
much so that God's best image, man, was 
crushed to the earth beneath the heel of kingly 
power. But that discovery was'the dawning of 
a new day in the world's life. It was like the 
second advent of Christ to the nations. 

How strange that for so long a time this land 
of ours should be unknown to the Old World — 
a land of rich soil, vast rivers, broad lakes, 
mines of precious and useful metals, so that any 
vocation could be pursued with profit! The 
opening of such a door to the crowded popula- 
tion of the Eastern Continent, blinded by igno- 
rance and fettered with superstition, was indeed 
an event of magnitude. It lighted up the hori- 
zon like a glorious sunrise after a dark night. 



THE SPIRITUAL NURSERY. 13 1 

At a time when this continent was most 
needed, God opened its gateways, and the mill- 
ions have rushed in to found an empire. Here 
the great battles of humanity have been fought, 
and here the mission of the Gospel is to be seen 
in its greatest power. Nowhere is there a more 
perfect freedom, and in no place on earth is 
education more widely diffused. 

It is not enough that we should have wealth 
and culture, we must have virtue and religion. 
This is the grand arena where the great moral 
principles unfolded in the Word of God are to 
be triumphant over every form of false doctrine 
and false practice. God is to be loved because 
he is God, and man to be honored because he 
is created in the image of God. 

There is danger that we shall become 
materialists, and recognize no force but that 
which comes of steam, no wealth but the 
gold of our coffers. There is an intoxication 
attending the acquisition of wealth greatly to be 
dreaded. Men become so eager in the chase 
that they forget God, and are lost to every 
noble quality of head and heart. Education is 
not enough. Knowledge is power, as well for 
evil as good. We may become a nation of 
splendid heathens, rich and cultivated, as beau- 
tiful and as cold as a mountain of ice glittering 



132 INSIDE THE GATES. 

in the sun. Our school-houses are public bless- 
ings; but without our Churches and Sunday- 
schools we should be as a ship without a rudder. 
Above eagle and lion and crescent, the Cross 
is to be the true heraldic sign of the regener- 
ated nations. So "the kingdoms of this world 
shall become the kingdom of our Lord and of 

his Christ." 

The Sunday-school exists as a spiritual nur- 
sery of young souls, as a feeder to the Church; 
but that is not all. In this work it affects and 
influences the nation at large ; yes, and the whole 
wide world, from equator to pole. To this land 
they are coming from all the world. We wel- 
come all, and we must try to save all. In the 
work of redeeming the world the Sunday-school 
must play a most important part. They who 
are to be our future legislators, judges, Presi- 
dents, poets, ministers, and merchants, are this 
day in the Sunday-schools of the land. What 
would we say if schools were established every- 
where, to teach burglary, counterfeiting, and 
kindred crimes? O, we should rise up in our 
might and abolish them forever. How much 
are we willing to do to sustain schools which 
teach truth instead of falsehood, virtue in place 
of vice, and religion instead of irreligion ? Let 
us not forget that the men who have risen to 



THE SPIRITUAL NURSERY. 1 33 

the highest positions in our country have been 
mostly those who have had the best early moral 
culture. The hope of the 'world lies largely in 
the education of the children. Then, by some 
means, let us draw every child into the Sunday- 
school that we possibly can. Teach them the 
principal truths of the Bible. Warn them 
against the evils which surround them in life. 
Inspire them with a love of country. Lead 
them to the Savior, who said, ' ' Unless ye be 
converted, and become as little children, ye can 
not enter into the kingdom of heaven." 

The present great Sunday-school movement 
seems to be under the inspiration of the Al- 
mighty. God is in it. The mind of the nation 
is to be moved, and prepared for great future 
contests ; for as a people we have not yet got 
beyond danger. I believe that in the future 
there are to be great battles for the right. We 
can easily look forward to a time when a hun- 
dred millions of people shall call this land their 
home. All nations, all languages, all customs, 
all political ideas, are seeking to root themselves 
in this soil. They are doing it now. The 
battle between infidelity, in many of its forms, 
and Christianity is growing fiercer every day. 
What is our hope? The Gospel, in the pulpit 
and in the Sunday-school. Here is to be raised 



134 INSIDE THE GATES. 

up a generation of Christian workers, who shall 
do valiant service for the Lord Jesus. And 
when the battle thickens and grows hot, and we 
look for the coming men and women, we shall 
see them on the distant hill-tops and along the 
valleys of America, coming in thousands, with 
open Bibles and warm hearts, God's army of 
occupation. "Occupy till I come." I hear 
them singing, as they march to victory : 

" We '11 not give up the Bible, 
God's holy book of truth, 
The blessed staff of hoary age, 
The guide of early youth." 

And filling all this beautiful land, from ocean to 
ocean, the voice shall break forth: 

" Our Father, God, to thee, 
Author of liberty, 
• To thee we sing; 
Long may our land be bright 
With freedom's holy light; 
Protect us by thy might, 
Great God, our King." 

Christianity means child-culture, child-salva- 
tion. I close this chapter appropriately with an 
extract from the late Bishop Armitage, of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, touching the child 
and the Church. 

"I find," says he, "a child in no religion 
but in the religion of Jesus. Mohammed. seemed 



THE SPIRITUAL NURSERY. 135 

to know nothing about a child. The heathen 
seemed to know nothing about children in their 
mythology. Their gods were not born as chil- 
dren. They were never endowed with the 
attributes of children. They were never clothed 
with the sympathies of children. They never 
threw themselves into the socialties of children. 
They were gods of terror, gods of passion, gods 
of lust, gods of blood, gods of might; but they 
were never gods of helplessness, a span long. 
O no ! That would not have been natural. 
That would not have been divine, in their con- 
ception. And hence they make no provision 
for children. 

"But the great elemental fact of Christianity 
is the Holy Child Jesus. Born of a woman, 
born under the law, in total helplessness physi- 
cally, laid in a manger, cared for by no man, 
but the child of the Everlasting Father, and the 
Prince of Peace. So that the Gospel of Jesus 
is the only religion on earth that makes provis- 
ion for a child, and is the only religion in which 
a child is laid at the basis and foundation of 
its faith. 

"The religion of Jesus is the only religion 
that dares to put its sacred books into the hands 
of a child. No other religion dares hazard its 
existence on such a venture as that. Sacred 



I36 INSIDE THE GATES. 

books of Hinduism, sacred books of Moham- 
medanism, sacred books of any religion, put 
into the hands of its children, would shock its 
authors and its votaries. But the Christian re- 
ligion brings its sacred books to the child. It 
says to the little one, 'They are able to make 
thee wise unto salvation, through faith that is in 
the Lord Jesus;' and, although the child can 
not master their mysteries, he can believe their 
mysteries, he can obey their mysteries, he can 
elucidate their mysteries. 

"The religion of Jesus is the only religion 
that boasts its noblest workmanship wrought in 
the spirit of a little child, and is better adapted 
to effect personal salvation in childhood than at 
any other period of life. " 







" Delightful task! to rear the tender thought, 
To teach the young idea how to shoot, 
To pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind, 
To breathe the enlivening spirit, and to fix 
The generous purpose in the glowing breast." 



" A little theft, a small deceit, 

Too often leads to more; 
'Tis hard at first, but tempts the feet, 

As through an open door. 
Just as the broadest rivers run 

From small and distant springs, 
The greatest crimes that men have done 

Have grown from little things." 



" If for a world a soul be lost, 
Who can the loss supply? 
More than a thousand worlds it cost 
One single soul to buy." 









VII. 




d^ildfen $aved. 

VERY large number of the human 
family die in infancy or early child- 
hood. In all places where the dead 
sleep, there are many little grassy mounds 
scattered about among the larger ones; 
but in just what proportion I have not at 
hand the means of knowing. Some have 
placed it as high as one-third of all. 

It is a most comforting thought to 
those who have lost children, and they 
are many, to know that not one of all 
the millions of little ones that have died 
has ever gone down into the regions of the lost. 
The time was when some people — honestly 
enough, I have no doubt — believed that children 
of unconverted parents, dying in infancy, were 
lost. But that day has passed away, never to 
return again, let us hope. 

139 



JL 



140 INSIDE THE GATES. 

The atonement, which Christ made for the 
sins of the world by his sufferings and death, 
included all the children. Whatever may be 
the tendencies of human nature to sin, tenden- 
cies growing out of an innate condition of the 
heart, unless there be a direct putting forth of 
will there is no guilt, there can be none. The 
child has not sinned, and therefore can not 
suffer any of the consequences of willful trans- 
gressions. So our dear departed children are 
in heaven — they are saved.. Had they lived, 
they might have been lost to all good in this 
world, and lost in the next; but now that they 
have died they are saved to us forever. Then, 
dear mother, if you have ever had one moment's 
anxiety about your dear child's safety in the 
spirit-land, whither it has gone, dismiss that fear 
at once and forever. Look heavenward. Your 
child is safe "inside the gates." 

But this is not a book on dogmatic theology, 
and therefore I turn from that phase of the 
subject. The title of this chapter implies just 
these few words, and I have said all I wish to 
say now on that point. I see your children 
growing up to manhood and womanhood, and 
it is my purpose to consider some things which 
relate to their safety in this world. Safety here 
will be safety there. 



CHILDREN SAVED. 141 

And now, please note this, that the moral 
culture of the child should begin in the earliest 
dawnings of its infant life. The day it begins 
to think and act, let its training for heaven com- 
mence. The first word the child hears, the first 
smile which greets its eye, have to do with its 
whole after-life. That infant mind will expand, 
that, heart will feel, that soul will move about 
in this world. How shall it grow up — to vice 
or virtue? 

Away yonder, on the Alleghany Mountains, 
there is a high and sharp, rocky ridge, which 
was once pointed out to me, in one of my 
Summer rambles, as the ''Divider." "What do 
you mean by 'Divider?' " I remarked to my 
guide. "Why," said he, pointing to a sharp 
crest of the mountain on which we were stand- 
ing, "a drop of rain falls on it, and is split in 
two — one-half bounds off to the west, finding 
its way into the Ohio River, and thence to the 
Mississippi, and at last reaches the Gulf of 
Mexico. The other half goes down into the 
Susquehanna River, thence flows away off into 
the Potomac, the Chesapeake Bay, and the 
Atlantic Ocean." The point was well made — 
possibly a little too fine, but true nevertheless, 
if not with the drop, yet true with the shower. 
No rain-shower ever falls on that ridge when 



142 INSIDE THE GATES. 

one part does not go to the Gulf of Mexico, 
and the other to the Chesapeake Bay. 

In my native town there was an old house, 
which stood just where it served as a divider of 
waters. Whenever a shower fell on it, the roof 
on one side started the waters toward the 
Atlantic Ocean, and on the other toward the 
Pacific Ocean. 

Too much stress can not be laid upon the 
early influence and teachings of home. It is 
the "dividing ridge," whence our children are 
started for heaven or hell. There is a turning- 
point in the life of every mortal, a time when 
the soul either goes up or down, turns to the 
right or the left; and such being simply a fact, 
let us make note of it, and use it in the interest 
of good government, and in the interest of true 
religion. A word fastened in a sure place may 
give direction to a life, and thus set in motion a 
train of good influences that will never cease. 
Dropped in faith, the sunshine of God's provi- 
dence will take care of the germination of the 
good seed. Many a deed done, and word 
spoken, through the good spirit of the moment, 
are forgotten by us ; but God always remembers 
to bless the precious seed sown in the heart-soil. 

I have before in this book spoken of the 
little tree, by which to illustrate my meaning; 



CHILDREN SAVED. 143 

now let me make use of the bud. Have you 
ever noticed how wisely the great Author of 
nature has protected the buds on the trees and 
bushes? Examine them, and you will find in 
each and all vital germs, from which new 
branches, fruits, and flowers are to spring; and 
those germ-containing buds are protected by 
thick and firm scales, which ward off the cold 
winds and frosts, as in the olden times the 
shield, hung on the warrior's arm, warded off 
the arrows. So does God intend home to be a 
protection to the child. In every child there is 
a spiritual germ that must grow up to good or 
evil. Which? 

The recollection of the home education of 
our childhood is never wholly obliterated from 
our minds. In the days of busy manhood or 
womanhood there may be a partial forgetful- 
ness — things are stowed away somewhere in the 
chambers of the memory, as unseasonable goods 
in the store are packed away on remote shelves ; 
but once in a while the merchant looks them 
all over, and when he comes to take invoice for 
his final "closing out" he brings forth and lays 
every thing on his counter. I once knew a 
very old man, who, just before he died, re- 
quested that his hands might be folded on his 
breast, and it was done. Then, with feeble 



144 INSIDE THE GATES. 

voice, he repeated that simple prayer, "Now I 
lay me down to sleep," etc.; and that first 
prayer of his infant life, taught him by his 
mother, was his last utterance on earth. I am 
reminded of that great and good man, Rev. Dr. 
Nott, who for a long time before he died was 
blind and childish. His wife, who was younger 
than he by several years, sat by his bedside day 
by day, and sang to him the songs of his child- 
hood; and he was hushed to repose by them, 
as an infant on its pillow. She often sang to 
him that precious old cradle-song, "Hush, my 
dear; lie still and slumber," which always 
soothed him most. Think of that,, my dear 
reader! a great dying college president, a man 
famous all over the Christian world, hushed into 
soft slumbers by a baby-song ! O r it speaks to 
us of childhood and its recollections with a 
mighty voice ! In his last days the brightest 
visions this good man had were those of his 
early home, while the name which came oftenest 
to his lips was the name of his mother. As 
with him, so with all of us : the training of 
childhood exerts an influence on all our after- 
years. 

We must not forget this one general prin- 
ciple, Develop the child from within outward. 
The soul gives expression to the face. We 



CHILDREN SAVED. 145 

judge of people by the way they walk and talk 
and look. If a child be happy in spirit it will 
be brighter in countenance. The dull, sullen, 
and gloomy child, marred by its physical inher- 
itance most likely, may be cheered up and made 
lively, and even brilliant, by the right kind of 
education in the home circle. But, to do this, 
you must plunge yourself into its peculiarity of 
imagination and feeling. The child's moral 
nature must be studied. No kind of instruction 
appeals more strongly to child-nature than that 
which is religious. Religious culture is the 
'"tree of life," whose fruits, if they are first 
eaten, will render harmless and salutary the 
"tree of knowledge." Religion is the best 
conservator of life, and it rests primarily on the 
idea of God. That great idea must be pre- 
sented to the young mind, not as a duty simply, 
but in such a way as to create a spontaneous 
love in the heart for God as a Father. A 
cheerful, sunny Christianity is the only one 
which can ever win the world's heart. Human 
nature loves the bright, the beautiful, the glad- 
some. That fact stares us in the face, go where 
we will, among savage or civilized races. It is 
part and parcel of the being whom God has made. 
And one of the best ways to banish all religion 

from the world would be to make it right harsh 

10 



146 INSIDE THE GATES. 

and morose and dull, as some people do. Let 
the child know that love to God and man is not 
a mere sentiment, an abstraction, but an out- 
going of duty and kindness. O, how mistaken 
are those Christian people who care only for 
happiness in their own hearts, whose religion 
consists in a sort of spiritual intoxication among 
themselves! They care but little for the great 
world, that watches for good deeds, and listens 
for kind words. 

I would make emphatic that one word, home. 
It is a gate within whose sacred inclosure the 
most valuable lessons may be learned, and 
where the very best work of life may be done. 
Then take your child by the hand and lead it ; it 
is not able to direct its own attention to these 
things ; it needs your help in the unfoldings of 
its spiritual life, just as surely as the tottering 
babe needs the supporting hand of nurse or 
mother when it is learning to walk, or as the 
opening flower needs the sunshine. And if the 
little learner in the home school makes mistakes, 
does wrong, instead of heaping on it your bitter 
reproaches and blame, show it your pity, take 
it to your heart, give it your sympathy, speak 
words of encouragement, and thus be its guide 
and support as it steps toward the better life. 
Home is a gateway which opens into heaven. 



CHILDREN SAVED. 147 

These children, ranging from mere infants up to 
young men and women, have hearts to love the 
good, the true, and the beautiful. They have 
minds to grasp the great truths of nature and 
of life. They have capabilities for the greatest 
good, and scarce one of them but often feels 
the deep inspiration of his being. 

Your children may have a fondness for mere 
personal charms, a relish for the outward attrac- 
tions of life only; but that is a "fickle fancy.' ' 
They are capable of better things. We must 
hold them in our thoughts, as having other 
tastes and desires as well, which they have not 
made known to us, possibly, or which have not 
yet been developed. There is a deep, strong 
current in every mind, that flows Godward. 
Look for it in the minds of your children. 
Seek its development, as a first duty you owe 
to the child. 

In recounting some steps necessary to the 
welfare of the young, I would ask, Wherein 
lies the true value of life? What is the child's 
destiny? What are the chief and crowning 
ornaments of every life? 

Every life has value. The young woman we 
meet on the streets is a loved and cherished in- 
mate of some family, a daughter, a sister. And 
if so, then is she linked by strong ties to others. 



I48 INSIDE THE GATES. 

She is looked upon by some father with only 
such feelings as a father can understand. Her 
mother sees in her her own image. Her step 
is but the echo of that mother's step as it was 
in the years long gone by, when she went forth 
in her girlish innocence and joy. In some 
brother's heart she lives in precious love. So I 
meet the young man, and the same thoughts 
come welling up in the mind. Whose son is 
he? Whence has he come? Whither is he 
drifting ? 

A Christian household is a beautiful place. 
The young man of noble worth and the young 
woman of virtuous life are indeed its jewels. 
Her song makes home melodious; her smile is 
a rainbow that arches grandly over the domestic 
altar; her word makes the heart beat quicker; 
her purity exalts home, and makes it more 
heavenly. His manly step has in it a courage- 
giving power, while his strong arm is a prophecy 
of future protection. 

The young man has a mission ; but it is not 
within his power to touch the home-life on all 
sides, as it is hers. He belongs rather to the 
outside world; she to the world within. He 
helps make the home; she softens and embel- 
lishes it. He fences in the plat of ground ; she 
plants and rears the flowers, to sweeten the air 



CHILDREN SAVED. 1 49 

with their fragrance. He helps to lay the 
foundation of the home; she trains the tressy 
vine which clambers upon its walls. If there is 
any thing beautiful in this world, it is the home 
where innocent and joyous youth become the 
constant source of help and comfort to each 
other, and to venerable parents. 

Have you seen the devoted daughter caring 
for a sick mother? Have you seen her pushing 
her way modestly through the crowd, to lead 
away a drunken father from his cups? Have 
you seen her, by her gentle love, winning 
back a straying brother? Have you seen the 
brave young man keeping the family together, 
and caring for a widowed mother? All these 
we have seen, and to see was to admire. 

But these children of ours have another and 
a wider sphere in which they are destined to 
move. I mean this great world of society. 
And here, as in the home circle, their influence 
should be constantly exerted for good. But 
how can they be a blessing if they have been 
neglected? How can your child be useful to 
the world if you have allowed it to grow up in 
idleness? How can your girl be an ornament 
to society if she has . never been taught much 
else besides being a fashionable belle? if sha 
has been impressed with the idea that the only 



150 INSIDE THE GATES. 

way to charm others is to put on tinselry? 
False notions are cursing the world. In these 
days our young people are taught that life is 
mostly an amusement. The real solid discipline 
which develops genuine manhood and true 
womanhood is largely forgotten. There needs 
to be reform at this point every-where. Our 
young people need some amusement and recre- 
ation, I admit; but not less should we think of 
what is called the "hidden man of the heart,' ' 
the "meek and quiet spirit which in the sight 
of God is of great price/ ' 

The different spheres in which we move in 
life call out certain traits of character. The 
home sphere often develops selfishness between 
the different members of the same family. An 
only child is liable to be selfish. It has no 
competition. The family is hence a good place 
to cultivate unselfishness. Children should be 
taught to yield to each other's wishes and com- 
fort always. The world never has any admira- 
tion for selfishness. In man, in woman, or in 
child, it only repels; on the other hand, unself- 
ish serving exalts us. "He that is greatest 
among you, let him be as the younger; and he 
that is chief, as he that doth serve." A will- 
ingness to do for others is not only the highest 
expression of goodness, but the highest degree 



CHILDREN SAVED. 1 5 I 

of politeness. This is the power that wins the 
world. Of Christ's own unselfish death on the 
cross he said, "And I, if I be lifted up from 
the earth, will draw all men unto me." All men 
admire the spirit that sacrifices its own ease for 
the good and comfort of others. But selfishness 
reverses this. The selfish young woman lives 
only for herself. The selfish young man seeks 
not the good of others, at home or abroad, and 
will as a result have fewer friends, be less an 
ornament to society, and will pass through life 
without doing any substantial good. Teach the 
child to devote itself to the good of others. 
Teach the young woman to cultivate what the 
Bible calls a "meek and quiet spirit." Therein 
lies the true beauty of life. Goodness is the 
brightest ornament any one, young or old, 
can wear. 

And as home is the place where personal 
characteristics display themselves mostly, so 
pride and vanity show off more in general 
society. There are some young people who, at 
home, are rude, selfish, fretful, fault-finding, 
surly, dull, irritable, indifferent, and lazy, who 
never cast one ray of light on the home — the 
poison of home they are — who in society are all 
honey and beauty. They seem like angels, in 
their sweetness. But I am sure that it will take 



152 INSIDE THE GATES. 

more than wings to make angels of a good 
many young ladies in this world. It is the 
most difficult thing in the world to make false- 
hood appear in the garments of truth — to make 
white black, or black white. And when you 
endeavor to be what you are not, when you put 
on a character not your own, and which you do 
not really desire to be, else you would be, you 
are acting out a falsehood, and the world feels 
it, knows it, by a. sort of moral intuition. Soci- 
ety reads you as it reads a book. If you wish 
to be thought good and true, be good and true. 
Be the pure gold, not the alloy of baser metal. 
Remember that we must all be tested by the 
trying ordeal of human judgment in this world, 
and by the judgment of God in the end. So 
teach the child. 

But I wish to say something about destiny. 
Life is not .a mere play, a dream, but it is> a 
tremendous reality. The very thought of ex- 
isting in this world takes in the idea of struggle, 
burden -bearing, and sorrows, which shall lie 
heavily on the heart. O, do we fully realize 
what life is? Have you thought, dear parent, 
of the hard and stony road your child may 
have to travel in the future, possibly with sore 
and bleeding feet, and what a sad and aching 
heart it may yet carry in its breast? I say it 



CHILDREN SAVED. 153 

not to discourage you, not to detract from the 
brightness of the picture hung up before you. 
I believe in crowding all the sunshine into life 
we can. But, then, there are some things we 
must meet, our children after us must meet, 
and it is best they should be forewarned. Your 
child is young now, and gay, and innocent; but 
time will bring wrinkled brow and faded cheek. 
Beauty of a certain kind will pass away; but 
purity and innocence, the higher beauty of soul, 
may remain forever. Dreams and visions be- 
come stern realities — poetry is converted into 
dull prose. The light becomes dim; Spring 
gives place to Autumn ; the form stoops beneath 
the load of care. The gay and gleeful girl, who 
moves around your home to-day with fairy steps 
and ringing laugh, may yet lean upon her staff 
with trembling and feebleness. The picture I 
have sketched is in no way one whose realiza- 
tion is to be desired; but that does not alter the 
case. Our children are destined to bear heavy 
burdens, and pass through hard and trying 
scenes. These grow out of the conditions of 
life. They must be met and endured; for they 
are of God's providence, and they are needed 
for life's discipline. 

If, then, these things be true — and who 
doubts them? — can you not see, as a parent, 



154 INSIDE THE GATES. 

that to cultivate in your children the sterner 
graces and virtues of life is your solemn relig- 
ious duty? There is much they may learn now, 
which will come to their aid in the years to 
come. These burdens and sorrows of life, when 
they do come, will be alleviated somewhat by 
the preparation which they have received for 
them by your care. 

We see around us the bright, the beautiful, 
the pure-hearted young women. What shall be 
the future of many of them? O, that I could 
draw the picture in lines of beauty, and that I 
could have it as we all desire ! But facts are 
facts. Your child's life may be one of beauty, 
or it may be sadly marred. She may be the 
wife of some besotted and cruel drunkard. She 
may live to see the day when hunger shall 
pinch; her children may be clad in rags. Her 
life may be a burden, to drag her down, alone 
and neglected, , weary and disheartened. She 
may go through a miserable existence, so unlike 
the promise of her young and hopeful girlhood. 
These things have been, and they will be so 
again. Such is life, in this world of sinful, 
fallen humanity. Would that it were otherwise ! 

But I do not forget that all lives are not joy- 
less. There are many oases in the desert, many 
cups which overflow with joy. We must study 



CHILDREN SAVED. 1 55 

to make the best of life. To be good, to do 
good, is the true aim of life. "All things," 
even burdens and afflictions, "work together 
for our good." To battle bravely with the 
winds and tides of life is to be grandly heroic. 
They who make the very best of their condi- 
tion, whatever it is, though it be one of poverty 
and lowliness, are the best examples of heroism 
in this world. This being true, it follows that 
life, however dark, is not lost. It is like the 
sun struggling through the clouds — there is 
light beyond. 

I come now to speak of one point especially, 
in the matter of doing for the child just what 
the foregoing implies. Cultivate in your child's 
life the habit of Church-going. If the home 
and the Sunday-school are "gates," not less so 
is the Church. Why is it that in our Sabbath 
congregations ordinarily, anywhere in Christen- 
dom, so few children are seen? The child is 
dressed up and sent to Sunday-school, as if the 
Church service were of no particular conse- 
quence. And so the child grows up without 
the habit of attending Church. What is the 
result? A nation of young people who do not 
think of going to Church. There are young 
men and young women by the hundreds, in the 
families of this Christian land every-where, who 



156 INSIDE THE GATES. 

make the Sabbath a holiday, instead of a holy 
day. Parent, can you afford to allow your 
child to grow up disregardful of the claims of. 
public worship ? But you say, I have no pew 
in the church. Then, I say, get one. And if 
you do not fill it yourself, see to it that your 
girls and boys do. It is the pivotal center on 
which the child's life often turns. I have had 
an experience in my own family, in three dif- 
ferent cases, and consequently I am prepared to 
affirm that in my opinion any ordinary child, of 
from five to six years old, can be trained to 
attend Church, and to be as still and quiet as a 
child ever ought to be during the hours of 
religious service. 

Have you ever thought of the wonderful 
power of habit? Shakespeare, speaking of 
habit, said, "Keep a gamester from his dice, 
and a good student from his books, and it is 
wonderful." I have read many wonderful things 
of the power of habit over us. Once a young 
man was walking along the dusty highway on a 
bright Summer day, when suddenly his eye fell 
on a gold eagle lying before him. He picked 
it up and put it into his pocket, richer in gold 
by that much ; and ever afterward he looked 
down, instead of up. He always saw the dusty 
road — never the blue skies and bright sun, and 



CHILDREN SAVED. 157 

the beauties above his head; ever afterward he 
crept in the dust, hunting gold eagles. It be- 
came the habit of hrs life. O, how sordid people 
may become by the force of habit ! 

There is an Eastern tale of a magician, who 
discovered by his incantations that the "philos- 
opher's stone" lay on the bank of a certain 
river, but was unable to determine its exact 
locality. He therefore strolled along the bank 
with a piece of iron, to which he applied suc- 
cessively all the pebbles he found. As, one 
after another, they produced no change in the 
metal, he flung them into the river. At last he 
hit on the object of his search, and the iron be- 
came gold in his hand; but, alas! he had 
become so liabituated to the movement that the 
real stone was involuntarily cast into the stream 
and forever lost. 

Many a soul is saved through the influence of 
good habits. Johnson said: "The law of habit 
is the magistrate of a man's life. It is not the 
pilot directing the vessel; it is the vessel, aban- 
doned to the force of the current, the influence 
of the tides, and the control of the winds." 

If you desire the salvation of your children, 
guard their habits, help form them aright. Be a 
watchful sentinel at the home gate, the Sunday- 
school gate, the gateway of the grand temple 



158 INSIDE THE GATES. 

of holy worship. Hold the children by virtue 
of your authority, if in no other way, under 
these influences as long as you can, until their 
better nature has time to assert itself, or those 
good influences have time to mold their lives. 

The possibility of early conversions is no 
longer a matter of question in the Christian 
world. It is not necessary that our children 
should grow up to be men and women before 
we may reasonably expect their spiritual regen- 
eration. There are this day thousands in the 
Church who date their earliest religious impres- 
sions away back in the early days of childhood. 
Children, at five and seven, have often given the 
most satisfactory evidences of their adoption into 
the kingdom of Christ. I have some little Chris- 
tians in my Church to-day, whose lives bear all 
the fruits of genuine Christianity: and on com- 
munion-day, among those w T ho approach the 
altar, none are more welcome to the bread and 
wine than these same " babes In Christ. " Our 
children should never be considered as being 
outside of the visible Church. Christ died for 
them. They should be consecrated to the Lord 
in their tender infancy. They should be taught 
the nature of prayer, and to pray; they should 
be instructed in the first principles of Christian- 
ity, sent to Sunday-school and taken to Church; 



CHILDREN SAVED. 159 

they should be impressed with the true idea of 
their relation to God and his Church. They 
should be led to understand that Christianity is 
more than a mere form. Let the "ax be laid 
at the root of the tree." Bear them to Christ, 
as needing a change of heart ; lead them to seek 
his saving power in their hearts. And when 
they give these signs, enter their names on the 
records of the Church, as full members. 

Our children should be born in the Church, 
live in it, die in it; and this is what I mean by 
Children Saved. 

" Catch then, O catch, the transient hour, 
Improve each moment as it flies ; 
Life 's a short Summer, man a flower — 
He dies; alas, how soon he dies!" 




ipfyitt Jb$L 



" There is no swerving from a right line that may not lead 
eternally astray." 

" The living rock is worn by the diligent flow of the brook." 

" For atoms must crowd upon atoms, ere crime groweth to 
be a giant." 



' 'T is fearful building upon any sin; 
One mischief, entered, brings another in, 
The second pulls a third, the third draws more, 
And they for all the rest set ope the door; 
Till custom takes away the judging sense, 
That to offend we think it no offense." 



" He who once sins, like him who slides on ice, 
Goes swiftly down the slippery ways of vice ; 
Though conscience check him, yet, these rubs gone o'er, 
He glides on smoothly, and looks back no more." 



VIII. 




C^Hdf en I<ojft. 

HE cars were speeding along at the 

rate of about thirty miles an hour, 

while we sat there in our grief. The 

world without was smiling in its beauty. 

The crowd of strangers about us knew not 

our sorrow; but I dare say the most of 

them had lost friends — perhaps children — 

and had they known of our loss they would 

have felt keenly for us. 

Just one short month before we had 
gone over the same road, and, for aught I 
know, in the same coach. All was joy 
and hope then. But how changed the return 
trip ! What a new aspect every thing wore 
now ! At one of the stations I thought I would 
go out to the baggage-car, and see my dear 
child. O, to think of the sweet child away off 
among the trunks by herself in the baggage-car! 

163 



1 64 INSIDE THE GATES. 

That was indeed hard to bear. But then I felt 
better about it, from the fact that when the box 
was raised up, at the depot from where we 
started, by a couple of strong men, I stood by, 
and asked the baggage-man if he would not 
please see that it was put some place by itself. 
I never saw that man before — I may never see 
him again in this world. I do not know his 
name, nor where he lives, but I shall not forget 
him. He took in all the feelings of my wounded 
heart. He spoke so kindly, he cared for my 
little box so tenderly. "Put it over here," he 
said to the men who lifted it up, "where it will 
not be touched." Dear man! Perhaps he had 
some little flaxen-headed girl at home waiting 
his return. He may have had my experience, 
and known how deep was my sorrow that day. 
He was tender of my feelings ; that I know, for 
he cared so kindly for my little box. 

At several of the stations I went out to see 
about my child. Once, when I stepped into 
the car, one of the train-men, a plain, rough, 
hard-working man, was sitting on the box, eat- 
ing his lunch. At first I thought I would not 
disturb him; it could do no possible harm to 
me or the dear child. Besides, it was a very 
convenient place, and the hungry man needed 
his food. But then my feelings were very tender 



CHILDREN LOST. 165 

toward that little box and its precious contents; 
and so I said to the man, "Won't you, please, 
sit somewhere else ? That box contains the 
body of my child." Poor fellow! He had not 
thought about it. He rose up at once, and 
begged my pardon ; said he did not know it, 
and seemed to feel as if he had done some 
great wrong. I told him it was all right now; 
it was only a matter of feeling. Then he said, 
"The box shall not be touched, sir, by any 
one; I'll take care of that." I took him by 
the hand and thanked him, and went back to 
my seat in the coach. Well, all I have to say 
is, that while a man's exterior may be very 
rough -looking, within there may be a very 
kindly soul. Perhaps he too had lost a dear 
child ; if so, then he could know something 
of my sorrow. 

We were sitting there, grieving, and doing 
what so many others have done, reproaching 
ourselves, or trying to do so. We thought over 
what we had done, and what we had not done, 
We saw where we might have done differently. 
Possibly, after all, we were only suffering a 
penalty for wrong treatment in some way. I 
felt as if I wanted to blame myself. If we had 
done this, or had not done that, our dear child 
might have been spared to us. I think some- 



1 66 INSIDE THE GATES. 

times people have reason to reproach themselves 
for neglects of duty toward their children. We 
could not call to mind any willful neglect, in 
any sense; all that we could think of was, that 
we might have done differently. Whether that 
would have made any difference in the outcome, 
only God knows. When people have done the 
very best they know how, though they have 
committed errors — "To err is human" — there 
is no just ground for any self-reproaching. Do 
the best you can, and leave the issues with God. 
just then the newsboy came along, and 
threw down some papers. I took one up, and 
almost instantly my eyes fell on the following 
account of death in high places. The incident 
shows how we are all related to each other, and 
how much of life we all have in common. The 
house of royalty mourned its dead. We, in 
our more humble walk, mourned our loss as 
much. The picking up of that paper at that 
moment seemed like a special providence. The 
words came like an angel whisper to two sor- 
rowing hearts. I will here insert the article 
as it appeared, in full, for the good it may 
do others: 

"The accompanying beautiful and pathetic poem, by 
the author of 'John Halifax, Gentleman,' was suggested 
by the fatal accident which recently befell the young 



CHILDREN LOST. 1 67 

♦ 
Prince Frederic William, son of Prince Louis, of Hesse, 
and the Princess Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria. The 
particulars of the accident are as follows : On Thursday, 
the 27th of May, the nurses brought three of the children 
into their mother's bedroom, in the Grand Ducal Palace 
at Darmstadt, about eight o'clock in the morning. One 
of them', Prince Ernest, who is four years and a half old, 
ran into the adjoining bath-room, the window of which 
was open. The mother hastened after this child, leaving 
the other two children, Princess Victoria, and Prince 
Frederic William aged three. She could not have been 
absent half a minute ; but in that brief space of time the 
little one had got to the bedroom window. He leaned 
out, with childish curiosity, and let fall a toy with which 
he was playing, and in trying to recover it lost his bal- 
ance and fell into the court. The noise of his fall recalled 
his terrified mother, but it was too late. The height from 
the window to the garden is about twenty-four feet. 
When the little boy was picked up, it was found that he 
had no bones broken, but he had suffered a concussion 
of the brain. He did not recover consciousness, and died 
about eleven o'clock at night of the same day. 

A LITTLE DEAD PRINCE. 

(BURIED JUNE I, 1873.) 

" Over the happy mother's bed 

Gambol three children, loving and gay; 
Ernest strong, and delicate Fritz, 

Pretty baby Victoria. 
Two little princes, sans sword, sans crown, 

One little princess, infant-sweet — 
In the mother's heart, as rich and as full 

As any mother's in lane or street, 
They grow — three roses — love-rooted deep, 

Filling with perfume all their own 



1 68 INSIDE THE GATES. 

The empty air, oft so sharp and keen, 

Of the lonely heights too near a throne. 
The palace windows stand open wide, 

The harmless windows ; and through them pass, 
May winds, to the palace children dear 

As to cottage babies upon the grass ; 
Out through the chamber runs Ernest bold ; 

The mother follows, with careful mind, 
Fearless of fate, for a minute's. space 

Leaving the other two behind. 
Grand on the bed, like a mimic queen, 

Tiny Victoria gravely sits; 
While, clasping closely his darling toy, 

Up to the casement climbs merry Fritz; 
It drops — his treasure ! He leans and looks — 

Twenty feet down to the stony road — 
Hear'st thou that shriek from the mother's lips? 

Hast thou no mercy, O God, O God? 

One ghastly moment he hangs in air, 

Like a half-fledged bird from the nest's edge thrown, 
With innocent eyes of dumb surprise — 

Then falls — and the brief young life is done. 

Mother, poor mother ! try to see, 

Not the skeleton hand that thrust him there 

Out of sunshiny life into silent death, 
But the waiting angels, in phalanx fair. 

O, try to feel that the earth's hard breast 

Was the bosom of God, which took him in — 
God, who knows all things, to us unknown — 

From sorrows, sicknesses, peril, or sin. 
O hear, far off, the low sound of tears, 

Dropping from many an eye like mine, 
As we look at our living children sweet, 

And our mother-hearts weep blood for thine. 



CHILDREN LOST. 1 69 

God comfort thee ! Under the robe of state 

That hides, but heals not, wounds throbbing wild, 
Mayst thou feel the touch of one soft dead hand — 

The child that will always remain a child. 
And when the long years shall have slipped away, 

And gray hairs come, and thy pulse beats slow, 
May one little face shine star-like out 

O'er the dim descent that thy feet must go. 
Mother, poor mother! 'neath warm June rain 

Bear to the grave thy coffin small ; 
Oft children living are children lost ; 

But our children dead — ah, we keep them all!" 

The two closing lines impressed me most: 

" Oft children living are children lost; 

But our children dead — ah, we keep them all!" 

Then, I said to myself, my children are not lost. 
As I rode along, through the two hundred 
miles and more, my mind was led out into 
varied reflections. Every-where in the world 
are scores and hundreds of lost young men and 
lost young women. The cities, the villages, and 
the country abound with them. They are not 
in perdition, but they are on the road that 
surely leads there. Many a mother has watched 
with anxious care over the crib of her sick babe 
by day and by night, and has prayed for its 
recovery with all the earnest pleadings of a 
mother's heart. She has seen it grow up to 
young manhood or womanhood, and then the 
sad day has come when she has seen that 



170 Inside the gates. 

daughter sold to sin — that son a drunkard, a 
thief, ay, a murderer. How true, 

" Oft children living are children lost!" 

That mother now cries, in her agony, O, if my 
child had only died in infancy! 

The old doctrine, once taught in some of 
our Churches, that children dying in infancy are 
lost in the next world, has long since been ex- 
ploded, never having had any foundation in 
either Scripture or reason. Nobody believes it 
now ; but that children are lost in this world, 
growing up to maturity in sin, every body 
believes. The child that grows up uneducated 
in morals is liable to be lost in time and eter- 
nity. Who is to blame for the profanity one 
daily hears every-where? At whose door lies 
the sin of Sabbath-breaking, so common? Who 
is ready to answer for the wrong done to society 
by the theater, as it exists to-day in our country? 
Where rests the responsibility growing out of 
the gaming and dancing customs of the age? 
For these I hold to be only varieties of the 
same general species. There may be an inno- 
cent game, a harmless dance, a moral theater ; 
but I ask, Do not these sports bear the young 
directly away from spiritual religion? Who 
questions it? Not one. 



CHILDREN LOST. 171 

I have elsewhere in this book spoken of 
games and gambling ; let me now speak of 
some of these other sins : dancing, theater-going, 
fashion, and intemperance. 

Every-where we meet the crowds rushing, 
with a species of intoxication, into all the so- 
called "innocent amusements." But are they 
innocent? Perhaps dancing is the most so of 
any of the ordinary amusements of the day. If 
I can show that to be objectionable, then it fol- 
lows that all others are more so. I am willing 
to admit that in the mere act of dancing there 
is no moral evil. A few children in the home 
parlor, keeping time to music, are not doing 
any harm ; but dancing has a different meaning 
from that. A glass of brandy is not in itself 
bad. No evil inheres in matter. The harm 
comes from taking the brandy into the sys- 
tem in a wrong w r ay ; as a remedial agent, 
it may even be of service. So of the mere 
physical act of dancing. Exercise is whole- 
some — we need it ; but we do not need the 
dance. 

I wish to ask the abettors of the dance, Is 
a life devoted to worldly, carnal pleasure, as a 
chief end, in keeping with the. claims of spiritual 
Christianity? Can you teach your child to pray 
for a clean heart, and at the same time encour- 



172 INSIDE THE GATES. 

age a life made up of every kind of amusement? 
Can you take your seat in the theater, and 
witness the plays usually put upon the stage, 
and at the same time feel that you are a dutiful 
and loving follower of the Lord Jesus Christ? 
Can you attend dancing parties in the name of 
the Christ you profess to love? Can a Christian 
pray, "Help me to dance this evening?" Jesus 
said, "Let your light so shine before men that 
they may glorify your Father which is in 
heaven.' ' Now, I most respectfully ask Chris- 
tian parents, Can the light of true piety shine 
out of the ball-room? Is it not true that danc- 
ing is a species of revelry? And has it not in 
every age, when used as an amusement, tended 
only to draw the heart away from the love and 
service of God? 

I know that some religious people see these 
things in a different light, and I am not disposed 
to impeach their honesty as Christians; but I 
write to show all who are in favor of opening 
the gates freely to every thing which the heart 
craves, that these customs are detrimental to a 
life of faith on the Son of God. I sincerely 
ask, Do you know of any who are devout, 
whose lives are especially marked as holy, who 
have any interest in dancing, theater-going and 
kindred amusements? There is nothing more 



CHILDREN LOST. 173 

certain, to my mind, than that they are all at 
war with the religion of Jesus. 

" Religion never was designed 
To make our pleasures less." 

Nor was it ever designed to be at war with our 
needful pleasures. But we know that between 
the religion of the Bible and the popular amuse- 
ments of the day there is an irrepressible con- 
flict. I have said that as a mere worldly 
amusement dancing is as harmless as any ; but 
the day your child becomes a true follower of 
the Savior the taste for the dance ceases; the 
day that a love of the dance takes possession of 
the heart the life and beauty of religion depart 
away out of the heart. 

What, let me inquire, are the regular con- 
comitants of the dance? Pride, prodigality, 
licentiousness, intemperance. These may not 
always be found in the private and select gath- 
ering; but they belong to the dance in its 
ordinary phase. 

I admit it is an amusement, a pastime. But 
is time of so little value that it needs to be 
thrown away? 

" Time destroyed 
Is suicide, where more than blood is spilt." 

I know, furthermore, that we need a degree of 
amusement; and there are those recreations 



174 INSIDE THE GATES. 

which are pure and intellectual, which can be 
taken in the name of the Lord Jesus. But let 
us not forget that life is more than an amuse- 
ment. It is a grand and solemn reality. 

The dance is fascinating. Satan understands 
just "how to capture the imagination; and so the 
path of sin is often a gilded highway, where 
embellishments charm the eye and music en- 
trances the ear, along which thousands rush 
headlong into pitfalls and ruin. 

The celebrated Dr. Adam Clarke gave this 
as his experience: "I long resisted all solicita- 
tions of this kind of enjoyment; but at last I 
allowed myself to be overcome. I grew pas- 
sionately fond of the dance. And now I lost 
the spirit of subordination, did not love work, 
was imbued with a spirit of idleness, and, in 
short, drank in all the brain-sickening effluvia 
of pleasu're. Dancing and company took the 
place of reading and study. The authority of 
my parents was feared, but not respected, and few 
serious impressions could be made to prevail in a 
mind imbued with frivolity. Yet I entered no 
disreputable assembly, and in no case kept bad 
company. Nevertheless, dancing was to me a 
preventing influence, an unmixed moral evil. I 
consider it a branch of that worldly education 
which leads from ' things spiritual to things 



CHILDREN LOST. 1 75 

carnal, from heaven to earth, from God to Satan. 
Let them plead for it who will, I know it to be 
evil, and only evil." 

Some people labor under the delusion that 
dancing refines the manners, that it cultivates 
graceful motions. I ask, Can we distinguish, 
upon our streets or in our parlors, by their sin- 
gularly perfect movements, those who have 
learned the art of dancing from those who have 
not? I submit: You send your sons and daugh- 
ters to the dancing-master to acquire grace of 
motion; do you wish your child to equal or 
excel the teacher? Would you like to have 
your child adopt the vocation of the dancing- 
master? You would not feel that your family 
name had received any luster from having one 
of its members thus employed. 

But I hear one say, "It is healthful, and 
therefore right." Who feels well after a night 
spent in the revelry of the dance, in the heated 
and foul atmosphere of a ball-room? It is not 
health-producing — it is the reverse. Not alone 
is it unhealthy to the body when excessively 
pursued, as it so often is, but it is unhealthy to 
the morals in innumerable instances, which is 
worse. Dr. Dio Lewis says: "Let a couple 
stand in the presence of company, with their 
arms about each other and their persons in 



176 INSIDE THE GATES. 

contact, as they do in these dances [round 
dances], and what should you think? The 
dance is made the excuse for what without it 
would be the grossest indelicacy/ ' Again: "It 
is [with dancing] as with much of the opera, in 
which the fine music is made the apology for 
words that can not be spoken without it." 

The Bible frequently speaks of the dance. 
It says, in one place, "There is a time to 
dance." Among the Jews dancing was purely 
a religious rite, and was only resorted to on 
occasions of great joy. After the overthrow of 
Pharaoh's army, Miriam, the prophetess, took a 
timbrel in her hand, "and the women went 
after her with timbrels and dances." They 
went through some sort of rite, expressive of 
their joy at the great victory achieved over 
their enemies. So the daughter of Jephthah 
met her father, and celebrated his victories 
with timbrel and dance. At the yearly feast in 
Shiloh the daughters of Israel "went forth in 
dances." Now, it will be noticed that on all 
of these occasions it was a religious observance, 
in which the women, "daughters of Israel," 
only took part. In all other cases the dancers 
were called "vain fellows." There are just 
three instances on record in the Bible of danc- 
ing as an amusement: First, that of the "vain 






CHILDREN LOST. I 77 

fellows" above alluded to, who perverted a re- 
ligious rite* and who were devoid of shame. 
Secondly, those irreligious people spoken of in 
the Book of Job, who sent their children "forth 
to dance." Was it to dancing-schools? At least 
it is said that they went to destruction. Thirdly, 
the case of Herodias, whose daughter danced 
before Herod until she turned his head, and he 
promised her any thing she might ask, even to 
the half of his kingdom. She was a good 
dancer. She must have been a very refined 
young lady; for when she made known her re- 
quest, it was that she might have the head of a 
minister, John the Baptist, given to her. John 
was opposed to dancing and to all its associate 
evils, and did not hesitate to rebuke the sins of 
people in high places, even though it should 
cost him his head. Many another minister has 
incurred the hot displeasure of certain classes 
for denouncing their sins. I suppose it will be 
so till the end of time. 

The dancing spoken of in the Bible, with the 
above noted exceptions, was not only always 
performed by the women — never by the sexes 
commingled — but it took place in the open 
field, and in the broad light of day. And if 
our young people would do the same at the 

present time, I do not know that even the most 

12 



178 INSIDE THE GATES. 

zealous Methodist would care, for it is not the 
mere dance that is objected to, but the tenden- 
cies, the associations, the results to spiritual 
religion. 

"A time to dance" — but when is that time? 
It can not be that God intended his people to 
gather together in the night-time and revel in 
the mazy whirl of the ball-room; for in all 
ages, and among all nations, these gatherings 
have been notoriously pernicious in their influ- 
ence both upon health and morals. Besides, if 
this be a command, then it is a duty enjoined 
alike upon all, the old and the young, male and 
female. If so, then it is right for the minister 
and the member; and, inasmuch as he is ap- 
pointed to be an example to his flock in all 
things that are proper and right, he should lead 
off, and himself be a real dancing-master ! Yes, 
the Bible says, "A time to dance;" but it only 
means that there is a time when people do 
dance, just as there is a time when we are born, 
a time when we plant, and a time when we 
pluck up that which is planted. 

The whole tendency of the dance is to light- 
ness, frivolity, wrong; and they who give them- 
selves up to it, or who encourage it in their 
children as the habit of their lives, only prepare 
the way, in a majority of cases, for those same 



CHILDREN LOST. 1 79 

children to slide into other vices; and in this 
"way are thousands of our Children Lost. 

Then, let me add that dancing and fashion, 
in its objectionable sense, are inseparable from 
each other. People may be fashionable when 
the fashion is a good one. But the word is 
rather technical in its meaning, and signifies 
pride displayed in dress. And here is one of 
the evils of the world: a mere love of display. 
Good taste, neatness of attire, comfort, health, 
economy, are subjects which come legitimately 
under this head, but can not be dwelt upon at 
length here. Dress is a fine art, and has its 
law. Nobody of intelligence will deny that. 
The mind, as well as the moral nature, displays 
itself in the dress quite generally. 

Religion does not require any particular pat- 
tern, nor any set color; yet some well-meaning 
people seem to think it does. They who decry 
all ornamentation and attempt to be "plain," 
and thereby advertise themselves as being very 
holy, generally get the credit of being bigoted 
and slovenly. They turn with intense satisfac- 
tion to the text which forbids, as they suppose, 
the "putting on of gold and costly apparel," 
when really all that the apostle meant was that 
the ornament of a woman should not be in these 
"outward adornments/' but in a "meek and 



1 80 INSIDE THE GATES. 

quiet spirit.' ' God loves the beautiful, and the 
whole universe attests it. Look at the fields in 
Summer. How rich! how fragrant! Look at 
bird and beast, and what ornamentation comes 
to view! So we may array ourselves becom- 
ingly, beautifully, without being in any sense 
extravagant or vain. There is a medium to be 
sought, a limit within which all is proper, be- 
yond which all is improper. I plead for the 
former. 

But I am opposed to this wretched and re- 
morseless tyranny of fashion, the beck which 
brings down the millions of mankind to their 
knees. The sin is charged mostly to woman's 
account, because she is more acutely sensitive 
to form and color than man ; but she is not 
alone. He follows the fashions as surely, if not 
as quickly and as enthusiastically, as she. It 
will be a glad day for the world when it learns 
just how to be neat, pretty, economical, and 
healthy in its apparel. But until it does, the 
thousands will bow their necks to the yoke, 
fortunes will be wasted, and time spent which 
might be more wisely employed. The love of 
dress, the desire to make a display, to rival or 
surpass some one else, has proved a snare to 
many a poor soul. Christ in the heart, formed 
the hope of glory, is the best counteractive for 



CHILDREN LOST. l8l 

this and all other evils. And so it do n't do 
much good for us to attempt to convert the 
hearts of mankind by stripping off their clothes ; 
but let us set the world a good example of 
kindness, industry, patience, faith, charity, and 
lead people to embrace Christ. "Let the ax be 
laid at the root of the tree." Get the heart 
right, and then the dress will adjust itself, and 
never till then. 

I have seen some professedly pious people 
who were not even clean. As between a little 
extravagance in dress and uncleanness, I think 
all must prefer the former. "Let all things be 
done decently, and in order." Avoid extremes 
on either side, and you will be about right. 

I have elsewhere remarked that one of the 
concomitants of the dance is the theater. The 
young man or young woman who dances and 
dresses must of course see the "play." And 
the theater — which has been condemned by 
statesmen, philosophers, and divines, as a school 
of immorality, for two thousand five hundred 
years; the theater, which has not been re- 
formed because it can not be, which exists to 
feed the low r er tastes, and which thrives best 
on obscenity; which, though tried again and 
again, always fails when made pure; the thea- 
ter, w T ith its nakedness, its misrepresentations 



1 82 INSIDE THE GATES. 

of life, with its expensiveness, and all that — has 
its defenders in our Christian families quite 
frequently. And it is not uncommon for Chris- 
tian men and women to go themselves, and take 
their children; and there, amid a boisterous 
crowd, stay until nearly midnight often. When 
will Christian people learn better? If these same 
people should happen to stumble into a prayer- 
meeting — not very likely, however, for they 
who love the one do not love the other; but if 
they should go to a prayer-meeting, they would 
be horrified if the services lasted a minute after 
nine o'clock. It would be so improper to be 
out after that hour! 

But the theater attracts by its gaudiness, its 
hilarity, and its vulgarisms; and the sons and 
daughters of our homes go there only to be 
beguiled frequently into ways that are not good, 
and by and by we see them as Children Lost. 

Still another vice belongs to this same cat- 
egory. Every-where w r e see the appalling evils 
of intemperance. O, how rum blasts and with- 
ers man or woman! Not so often as men are 
our women given to wine ; but even a woman, in 
her native queenliness, sometimes becomes a 
drunkard. Among the possibilities of the life 
of the young woman who reads this may be 
drunkenness; for what has been may be again. 



CHILDREN LOST. 183 

Rum is a monster that does not stop to dis- 
tinguish the sex of his victim. He goes forth 
blind to human condition, insensible to mortal 
woe, and deaf to every call of pity. The mon- 
ster gloats and thrives on the carcasses of his 
perishing victims. What cares he on what soil 
he puts his awful foot? What cares he about 
the wailings of human sorrow, or the agonies 
of despair? In palace or hovel, amid the blaze 
of chandeliers or in the dinginess of squalid 
poverty, he enters alike, only to crush out life, 
only to waste and kill. On one hand age lies 
helpless before him ; on the other, youth, in 
its flush and beauty, falls, never to rise again. 
In one place the innocent child is consumed in 
fires worse than Moloch ; in another, the strong 
man is smitten with a stroke that destroys every 
element of manly life. The monster can not 
tremble, for he never fears; he can not blush, 
for he is as heartless as the flinty rock; he can 
not feel, for he has no soul. His only mission 
is to slay guilty and innocent alike. O, if there 
is a foe whose steel would stab the vitals of the 
world, that foe is rum. 

I have thought sometimes I could bear it if 
the woe ended with the drinker; but, alas! it 
does not. He, besotted and senseless, the 
nerveless maudlin, goes reeling through the 



1 84 INSIDE THE GATES. 

streets, and each staggering step makes the 
crimson of shame take a deeper hue on the 
cheek of wife and child. The raving rum- 
maniac comes to his own door, while his heavy 
footfall startles the ear of innocence within, as 
if it were the crash of death. He lies down on 
the floor in stupor, with every trace of manly 
nobleness effaced, while eyes are red with weep- 
ing, and hearts sore with their burning. O, I 
say, if the drunkard alone suffered, or the 
drunkard-maker, it could be better endured ; but 
wives and children are doomed to bear these ills 
from year to year. 

A parent who puts wine on the table on 
New-Year's day, or a young woman who on 
that or any other day offers the glass to her 
gentlemen friends, tempts them to a life of 
drunkenness — sends a soul downward, whom 
woman, with her gentleness and virtue, should 
draw upward ever. And if you thus tempt the 
sons of other mothers, you need not blame 
those who tempt yours ; for it is written, i ' With 
whatsoever measure ye mete, it shall be meas- 
ured to you again/ 5 

Children Lost! Alas, it is too true. See 
them in crowds every-where — these hundreds 
of young men who know no Sabbath, because 
they will not. Sobriety and uprightness are 



CHILDREN LOST. 1 85 

the exception ; drinking, gambling, profanity, 
are the rule. There is a text here for a sermon 
to be preached in every home. Men and 
women must come to know that there must 
be reform — Christliness in every heart. There 
is a remedy for all these evils, if we only 
use it. 

I have buried my children. They are safe 
from all these contaminations — lost to me now, 
gone from me for a time; but saved forever. 
We could all wish our children had not died; 
but, had they lived, we might have said, 
"Would to God that they had died in their 
infancy!" 

Some one has said there are two ways of 
coming down from some high tower. One is 
to jump down, and the other is to come down 
by the steps. Both lead to the bottom. So, 
also, there are two ways of going to hell. One 
is to walk into it with your eyes open — few 
people do that — the other is to go down by 
the steps of little sins; and that way is only 
too common. Put up with a few little sins, 
and you will soon want a few more. Even a 
heathen could say, "Who ever was content 
with only one sin?" Thus your course will 
grow regularly worse every year. It has been 
said of the progress of sin in man: "First it 



1 86 INSIDE THE GATES. 

startles him, then it becomes pleasing, then 
easy, then delightful, then habitual, then con- 
firmed. Then the man is impenitent, then 
obstinate, and then damned. " 

Never play with fire, my child; never play 
with sin, my man. 




s* 






jfe mtb Ik Ibsstms* 



Life 's more than breath and the quick round of blood. 

It is a great spirit and a busy heart. 

The coward and the small in soul scarce do live. 

One generous feeling, one great thought, one deed 

Of good ere night, would make life longer seem 

Than if each year might number a thousand days, 

Spent as is this by nations of mankind. 

We live in deeds, not years ; in thoughts, not breaths ; 

In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 

We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives 

Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best." 



The good man suffers but to gain, • 
And every virtue springs from pain ; 
As aromatic plants bestow 
No spicy fragrance while they grow ; 
But, crushed or trodden to the ground, 
Diffuse their balmy sweets around." 



IX. 




I<ife ai\d it$ I<e^on$. 



HOEVER looks upon human life as 

any thing else than a struggle has 

a mistaken view of its meaning. 

Why is it so? The answer must be found 

in the deep-laid plans of the Creator of 

all things. 

You and I, dear reader, have had 
our dark days, our heavy burdens, our 
crushing griefs, and our bereavements. 
Our hearts have been pained, wrung, and 
we have stood and looked up into blank 
space, and asked, Why? 

Is there no explanation, no mean- 
ing to all this? Are we forever to stand 
gazing up into heaven, lost in amazement and 
wonder? Let us look around us, into our- 
selves, and perchance the explanation will be 

found, and we shall be able to find some 

189 



I 



it 



I9O INSIDE THE GATES. 

solid comfort, even in our trials and bereave- 
ments. 

The Scriptures every-where tell us of the 
hard trials we must endure as good soldiers of 
the Lord Jesus, of the battles we must fight, 
and of the victories we may win. 

This idea set forth in revelation has a very 
wide sweep. It belongs to nature, and there- 
fore is God's idea. We are told that there is 
in space a universally resisting medium, that the 
planets in their orbits about the sun are urged 
forward against it. In the earth all around us 
there are evidences of this universal plan. The 
grass struggles up through a hardened soil, and 
the trees of the forest are made to raise their 
heads against the winds which would sweep 
them from their fastenings in the earth. And so 
in human life: whatever we gain, in substantial 
wealth or moral development, comes of toil and 
struggle. 

The student of science walks not up some 
royal road, to wear unearned a crown in the 
grand temple; but he climbs the steep ascent, 
with oft rugged and dangerous declivities, and 
only gains the summit by the severest labors of 
the brain. The depths of philosophy do not open 
their hidden treasures to the casual observer, but 
to the mind which can bear the strain, and be 



LIFE AND ITS LESSONS. 191 

wakeful while others are sleeping. The fruitage 
of mind-harvest has its plowing and harrowing 
time, and its long days of patient waiting. 

God has set many a treasure in the view of 
mortals, not to grasp with a careless hand in 
our life -journey, but to be gathered by the effort 
which brings the perspiration to the brow, and 
sends the heart into quicker pulsations. 

And what is true of the toiling hand, and 
the toiling brain, is true also of the heart. 
There is such a thing as heart-struggle. The 
prize is held out to all, but given only "to him 
that overcometh." Every true life is one of 
growth, and the true goal of immortal being is 
perfection. "Go on even unto perfection." 
Not only so, but every true life is a warfare. 
Every human being born into our world is born 
to a life-contest with difficulties. Every human 
soul should bear aloft the banner inscribed with 
the words Battle and Victory. 

Let us inquire here into some of the common 
impediments of life, not forgetting the fact that, 
while we are often on a seeming stand-still, we 
are actually making the greatest progress. We 
stumble at our difficulties, and deem them ill, 
but victory is what we are seeking rather than 
speed, strength rather than ease ; and if we were 
not confronted and hindered by these impedi- 



I92 INSIDE THE GATES. 

ments of life, we could not have the glorious 
privilege of overcoming them. It is the stormy 
sea that makes the skillful mariner. The fierce 
winds cause the trees to send down their roots 
all the deeper into the soil. A student bends 
over some knotty problem in mathematics* for 
weary days, and possibly reproaches himself 
because he does not gain ground more rapidly. 
But the struggle with the difficulty is giving 
him intellectual strength. "To him that over- 
cometh," cries the angel of success from the 
hill-tops of heaven, as he reaches out the crown 
to the overcomer, the winner in the battle 
of life. 

To gain the full control of self is a first duty 
of every one. He who can, under all the pe- 
culiar trials of life, govern himself, is "better 
than he that taketh a city." Our self-govern- 
ment is imperative and possible. There is no 
success without it. No one who fails in this 
can be a winner in the world's contest. Anger 
must be subdued ; patience must be cultivated 
at all times; avarice must give way to benevo- 
lence; selfishness must be replaced with a love 
as broad and deep as the ocean. One of the 
things we all must learn is the spirit of mutual 
forbearance. We must have in our hearts the 
charity that "suffereth long, and is kind." To 



LIFE AND ITS LESSONS. 1 93 

bear kindly with those who think differently 
from us is a duty we owe to ourselves as well 
as to others. To be cool under provocations, to 
put a charitable meaning on the words of others, 
when "reviled to revile not again," to render 
good for evil, to love our enemies, — Such are 
the duties which are implied in this self-govern- 
ment, and they are essential to ' our Christian 
growth and victory. 

But how shall we win such a victory over 
ourselves ? Not by our own unaided self always. 
We can do something in the way of self-cultiva- 
tion. I do not believe that any one needs to be 
frenzied with anger. There is no reasonable 
excuse for it. If we have tempers, we still 
should be rational. To say that we committed 
such acts, or spoke such and such words, in a 
fit of anger, is a confession of weakness and of 
unreasonableness. If we feel the risings of 
anger, we should not let it overcome us. "Be 
ye angry, and sin not," is the divine prescrip- 
tion. If anger means displeasure, it may exist 
without sin. This is the meaning of God's 
anger. But most people, when they are angry, 
do sin. With them it is more than mere dis- 
pleasure, it is the uprising of malignant passion. 
Another one says, "I did wrong, but I was 
tempted." We should not yield to temptation. 

13 



194 INSIDE THE GATES. 

We should guard our steps, and turn away from 
the wrong, as we would from the hissing ser- 
pent. "Ah," says still another, "I am so ava- 
ricious by nature that I can not give away any 
thing." Then, I say, give away more, and 
break up that sad state of things by the sheer 
force of your will. When you do not want to 
give, be sure to do what you do n't want to 
do, and thus gain a victory over self. Subdue 
yourself. 

There are multitudes of professing Christians 
in the world, who are ever condemning them- 
selves because they do not do better. Their 
mistake lies in charging every fault to their na- 
ture, thus hoping to escape responsibility. 
Their cry is, "Lord, why hast thou made me 
so?" Now, to all these I would say, kindly, 
You must overcome these tendencies. It will 
require an effort ; but you must make the effort. 
Study your own weakness. See yourself in the 
light of God's Word; for unless you do put 
forth the effort you will come short, and your 
life will be one great moral blank. But then we 
all have the promise of help from on high. We 
should pray to our Heavenly Father to help us 
to be more generous, and then seek opportuni- 
ties for the exercise of our generosity. We 
should pray the Father to keep us from getting 



LIFE AND ITS LESSONS. 1 95 

angry,, and then be careful not to run into ex- 
citement. Our prayer should be, "Lead us not 
into temptation!" and then be sure not to go 
there of our own accord. The Creator did not 
design you to be a failure, but a grand success; 
and if you allow your tempers and trials to 
overcome you, then you thwart the plans of 
God. He has given these to us for our good. 
He intends us to become strong in a warfare with 
difficulties, else he would not have surrounded 
us with them. 

There is a great deal of ignorance to over- 
come. We have every thing to learn. We are 
not accountable for any wrong we may do in 
ignorance. But if we are ignorant when the 
resources of light are abundant, we can not 
surely plead our ignorance in justification of our 
wrong-doings. To study the Word of God is 
one duty, to come into the experience of the 
Christian life is another. The best knowledge 
which we have is the experimental. To teach a boy 
how to swim, theoretically, would be a difficult 
task ; he can only learn the art by plunging into 
the water. So we can all give directions how 
people ought to do under given circumstances ; 
but they who have been placed there know best 
what is needed. He who has overcome a fault 
in his character, who has lived down and 



ig6 INSIDE THE GATES. 

completely mastered a bad appetite, who has 
changed over from sin to holiness, from selfish- 
ness to love, is he whose life and words have 
the greater force. There are those who claim 
to know all there is to be known, to have seen 
all there is worth seeing, and to be themselves 
the embodiment of all goodness and wisdom. 
Beware of them. 

" A little learning is a dangerous thing," 

and so is a little goodness. 

Then, our weakness is to be overcome. 
Many a one holds back, does little, says very 
little, and is quite distrustful on account of a 
sense of littleness — weakness. This truly is a 
virtue in one sense; for it is said, "Let him 
that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he 
fall." No man should "think of himself more 
highly than he ought to think." "Be not wise 
in your own conceits." But we should be cau- 
tious not to convert that which is a virtue over 
into a vice. There is often great danger that 
we shall do nothing because we can not do some 
great thing, and thus we may lose what power 
we have. "For whosoever hath, to him shall 
be given, % and he shall have more abundance; 
but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken 
away even that he hath." Our very weakness 



LIFE AND ITS LESSONS. 1 97 

is often our strength. A weak soul struggling 
against fearful odds has usually the sympathies 
of the wise and good on earth and in heaven. 
"The race is not always to the swift, nor the 
battle to the strong." Moses, by obeying God, 
broke through the barriers of the sea, and es- 
caped from the panoplied hosts of Egypt, by 
smiting the waters with a rod. So, if we obey 
God, and use our little prayers, with often 
simple and poor sentences, and speak our trem- 
bling words in human ears, though w r eak and 
ill-chosen, God will make them mightier than 
mailed hosts, and by them we shall lead many 
a soul through seas of trouble to the broad 
fields of heavenly delight. O, who is so weak as 
not to be able to do a little good in this world? 
Providence is not usually on the side of the 
greatest talents, but rather with those of the 
best hearts. He judges of us by our motives, 
not by our capacities. The brilliant shine with 
splendor, the strong achieve mighty deeds, the 
swift-footed dash out of sight; but the perse'- 
vering ones, though slow and weak, often win 
the race. And in this world, where mortals have 
a race to run, a work to do, a battle to fight, 
the weak and timid often bear from thefield the 
wreath of the victor, the crown of the conqueror. 
But there are enemies to conquer in this life- 



lg8 INSIDE THE GATES. 

battle — one grand enemy, in many divisions. 
The Scriptures speak of this enemy as the 
"world/' the " flesh," and the "devil." The 
world represents all that which presents itself 
to the eye, the taste, the touch. We are to 
use the world ; but it must be in a subordinate 
sense. This is the ladder on which we must 
mount to the skies. We should conquer it, and 
subject it to our good. From all that surrounds 
us, all there is beneath our feet or above our 
heads, we should receive discipline. Earth must 
pay tribute to heaven. The flesh — the appe- 
tites — that which belongs to the body, as well 
as the body itself, must be brought into subjec- 
tion to Christ. We are to cleanse ourselves 
"from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit. " 
Religion means cleanness of soul and body. 
The Holy Spirit can not sanctify filth. Paul 
taught men to pray for a "heart sprinkled from 
an evil conscience, " but he did not forget to 
add something about "bodies washed with pure 
water." That clause was thrown in, I think, for 
the benefit of some unwashed Christians among 
those Hebrews. These bodies must be con- 
quered, our appetites must be reached. We 
must eat and drink to the glory of God, not 
from mere feelings of selfishness. The devil 
must be conquered. If not, he will conquer us. 



LIFE AND ITS LESSONS. 1 99 

Good or evil will be triumphant in the life of 
every mortal. Every soul will meet its reward 
of peace, or doom of despair. The devil, 
Satan, goeth about "like a roaring lion, seeking 
whom he may devour. " Conquer him we may, 
we can, we must, if we would have the sweet 
fruition of the redeemed in heaven. 

We hear those heavenly words, as they 
come to us from off the isle of Patmos: "To 
him that overcometh will I give to eat of the 
bidden manna, and will give him a white stone, 
and in it a name written, which no man knoweth 
saving he that receiveth it." These words were 
spoken not alone to the "Seven Churches," but 
to every struggling soul. The angel of the 
better life proclaims the message from the land 
of glory. Those words fall on the ear of the 
laboring man whose toil supports a dear, depend- 
ent family; they say, Toil on, for the promise 
is "to him that overcometh." To the student 
who trims his midnight lamp, and girds himself 
for the difficult hill of science, the angel calls, 
"To him that overcometh." To the struggling 
saint of God, when tempted, buffeted, tried as 
in a furnace, the voice comes from out the 
world invisible, saying, Struggle on, "Let us 
not be weary in well-doing; for in due season 
we shall reap, if we faint not." The loving 



200 INSIDE THE GATES. 

Father sees his dear children toiling up life's 
pilgrim way, but he lends a gracious hand, and 
makes the struggle a blessing. 

There is indeed a sweetness in the victory 
we may gain. Every time we overcome any 
difficulty we take a step higher on the ladder 
of glory. When we tread beneath our feet 
some passion, or some temper, we are on our 
way to the skies. Whenever we gain a victory 
over Satan we make him weaker, while we ob- 
tain new strength ourselves for future conquests. 
Hereafter shall we see " heaven open, " and 
then it will be that angels shall come and 
"minister unto us. " They will feed us on 
"hidden manna." 

The devout Jews held strongly to the tradi- 
tion that the ark of the covenant, the tables of 
stone, Aaron's rod, the holy anointing oil, and 
the pot of manna were secretly hidden by their 
king when Jerusalem was captured by the 
Chaldean army, but that when the Messiah 
should come he would restore all these sacred 
objects, and they would ever remain the sym- 
bols of their power and glory. And so he 
does. "To him that overcometh will I give to 
eat of the hidden manna." All that has been 
lost by sin is brought back by Christ. He said 
he had bread to eat of which the world did not 



LIFE AND ITS LESSONS. 201 

know. So he feeds us on il hidden manna." 
O, the present sweetness there is in the victory 
of faith! "And this is the victory that over- 
cometh the world, even our faith." 

The overcoming Lord is always in sympathy 
with the overcoming disciple. "I have over- 
come the world," said Jesus. We shall over- 
come it, too, if we are in Christ. The world, 
the flesh, the devil, were never conquered out- 
right until Jesus met and mastered them, until 
he suffered and rose again from the grave 
the third day. That was the triumph of hu- 
manity over death and the grave, and be- 
cause he lives we shall live also. Now, how 
beautiful the figure, "I will give him a white 
stone, and in the stone a new name written, 
which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth 
it." The white stone, in ancient times, was a 
very significant symbol. It had the meaning 
of pardon, absolution, in Roman jurisprudence. 
When the judges cast white pebbles the culprit 
was acquitted; when they cast black ones he 
was condemned. So the white stone meant 
acquittal. God will acquit us if we have faith 
in Jesus, and if we are obedient to his law- — if 
we "overcome." 

The white stone was used among the Greeks 
in the celebrations of Olympic Games. He 



202 INSIDE THE GATES. 

who conquered sometimes received a white 
stone with his name inscribed on it, which 
made the owner a public ward, the guest of the 
nation, and his honor was loudly proclaimed. 
The conquering Christian shall have glory and 
honor, and be exalted to the right-hand of God. 

The white stone was given as a token of 
admittance to feasts, and also as a ticket en- 
titling the holder to receive rich and valuable 
presents in the public distributions of garments, 
gold, or grain. And again, it was given as a 
badge of friendship between individuals and 
families, binding them in an unbroken and per- 
petual alliance. In this case the stone was cut 
into two equal parts, on which each of the 
parties engraved his own name, and then they 
interchanged with each other. These were, 
carefully preserved, and handed down to pos- 
terity in their respective families. This tessera 
hospitalism, like the custom of eating salt among 
the Arabs and Indians, was a bond of friendship 
that must not be broken. 

To the Christian, how significant is the 
promise of the "white stone!" It signifies 
the pardon of sin, the witness of the Spirit, 
and eternal life. "I will give unto them 
eternal life." It signifies an heirship to the 
wealth of heaven, and shall be our passport to 



LIFE AND ITS LESSONS. 203 

the glories of the upper kingdom. It admits 
us to the banquet of the King, and entitles the 
holder to the gifts of God. It means the 
friendship of heaven. Our Redeemer will rec- 
ognize the token. We have his name; he ours. 
We represent him on the earth, bearing his 
image; he represents us in heaven, bearing our 
flesh. He binds himself to us so long as we 
are true to him. "Nevertheless, the foundation 
of God standeth sure, having this seal, The 
Lord knoweth them that are his ; and, Let every 
one that nameth the name of Christ depart 
from iniquity." 

Every, true Christian is an overcomer, a 
victor. There is not one soul in heaven that 
has not gone up there a victor in some sense. 
All wear the chaplet of the conqueror. As the 
victorious chieftain comes home from war, and 
the streets of the city are thronged with multi- 
tudes who greet him with shouts of applause, 
so the angels of heaven greet the triumphant 
soul as it enters the gates of the New Jerusalem. 

" Death wounds to cure; we fall, we rise, we reign! 
Spring from our fetters; fasten in the skies, 
Where blooming Eden withers in our sight. 
Death gives us more than was in Eden lost." 



m^mpss nnh Jt$i* 



" Who learns and learns, but acts not what he knows, 
Is one who plows and plows, but never sows." 



" When fain to learn we lean into the dark, 
And grope to feel the floor of the abyss, 
Or find the secret boundary lines which mark 

Where soul and matter kiss. 
Fair world! These puzzled souls of ours grow weak, 

With beating their bruised wings against the rim 
That bounds their utmost flying* when they seek 
The distant and the dim. 

We pant, we strain, like birds against their wires; 

Are sick to reach the vast and the beyond ; 
And what avails, if still to our desires 
Those far-off gulfs respond? 

Contentment comes not, therefore ; still there lies 

» 

An outer distance when the first is hailed, 
And still forever yawns before our eyes 
An utmost — that is veiled. " 




<& 



f)afkqe^ &qd I<i^t. 

E often stand perplexed and ap- 
palled before the many dark prob- 
lems which confront us at almost 
every step in life. 

How much there is that is mysterious 
about us continually ! Darkness, thick 
and gloomy, settles down on us, and we 
are bewildered. Shall it be so forever? 
Will the time ever come when these 
clouds shall vanish, when the mists will 
rise, and the sun shine out in all its 
glorious brightness on the soul? We 
wait, we hope, we trust. 
I desire in this chapter to consider the sub- 
ject of human knowledge. It has to do with 
our comfort and peace. 

There are three, main thoughts which at once 

present themselves to the mind. One relates to 

207 



208 INSIDE THE GATES. 

the limitation of our knowledge in our present 
state, another to the subordination of that 
knowledge to the ends of virtue and individual 
development, and still another to the question 
of the future of our being. . What shall we 
know hereafter, when we come into the realm 
of pure spirit-life? What shall be the nature 
and extent of our knowledge then? Of course, 
so vast a subject can only be glanced at in my 
limited space. 

That upon all subjects which employ our 
faculties here we have but a partial knowledge 
is a truth which no one will call in question. 
Human society has been forming through these 
thousands of years, and in them all, from the 
days of Tubal Cain, "an instructor of every 
artificer in brass and iron," down to the days 
of Tyndall, the mind has been actively delving 
into mysteries every-where, seeking after the 
grand arcana of nature; and yet how limited is 
that knowledge ! how far we are from a perfect 
mastery in the realm of thought! I am not 
forgetful of the fact that the mind has gained 
much. Indeed, we often wonder at the great 
extent of human knowledge, for it is very great 
in the aggregate; but then who has perfect 
knowledge on any subject? The astronomers 
of the world can not tell us whether the nearest 



DARKNESS AND LIGHT. 209 

planets are inhabited or not. The stars in the 
heavens no one can number on account of their 
multitude, and the only knowledge we have of 
them is expressed in a comparatively few simple 
statements. The air around and above us has 
its laws, and yet in only a few instances have 
we determined with any degree of accuracy the 
aerial currents. Our protection against storms 
might be quite complete if we knew enough. 
We know something of the globe on which we 
live; but only in a few places have mankind 
looked into its deep recesses. Who knows 
really any thing about the center of the earth? 
Chemistry has made known to us some of the 
laws which govern matter; but, compared w r ith 
what it may yet teach us in its further unfold- 
ings, all we have learned is no more than the 
alphabet of twenty-six letters, when compared 
to all the books in the English language. 

What botanist can tell all about the vegetable 
world? Not one. What anatomist knows all 
about the human body? Not one. What geol- 
ogist can tell all about the formations of rock 
which compose the earth's crust? Not one. 
We stand almost paralyzed before the infinity 
of science, before any single science. The nat- 
uralist will tell you that any one of the numer- 
ous insect tribe would constitute the study of a 

14 



210 INSIDE THE GATES. 

man's whole life-time. The wing of a beetle 
can be fully comprehended only when we have 
mastered the whole science of mechanics. The 
animalculae of a single drop of stagnant water 
may be studied for years without exhausting 
the subject. The sun has been flooding the 
valleys and frescoing the hill-tops of earth these 
ages, and yet we do not know really what light 
is — whether it is a mere vibration of some kind, 
or matter in its most attenuated form. We 
suppose the former. Before the growing flow- 
ers in our gardens, the mightiest intellect of 
man is confounded. .No one can tell how they 
grow, nor by what strange law their petals are 
variegated with such exquisite beauty. How 
do these pigments reach their places, and blend 
in such delicate and beautiful shadings? Let 
him answer who can. 

And so of the still more profound laws of 
our being. The wonderful power which sets 
this heart beating in our infant-life, and keeps it 
in motion day and night until we die in green 
old age, who can explain? How does the soul 
exist in this bodily framework? Where is its 
seat of power and energy? How is the body 
perpetuated from year to year? And so on. 
I might cover whole pages with questions which 
have never yet been answered by mortal. The 



DARKNESS AND LIGHT. 2 1 1 

process of acquiring knowledge is like ascending 
some mountain-side. The higher we rise the 
wider becomes the range of our vision. The 
more we study the less we seem to know. To 
our minds the universe continually expands 
through deeper depths and wider fields of space. 
The mightiest telescope yet constructed has 
only ^looked into the vestibule of God's great 
temple. The grand arches and aisles and 
chancels will be seen only when this mortal 
shall have put on its immortality. 

What do we know of spirit-life in the unseen 
world? Only a few intimations have been given 
.us. There is an impenetrable veil which hides 
that land from this, and the whole world of 
humanity stands waiting for the curtain to rise. 
Every one looks over the river and wonders. 
A mystery hangs over the tomb ; a silence that 
almost oppresses us rests on the place of the 
dead. No voice speaks to us audibly out of 
the deep eternity. Millions are ever asking, 
"If a man die, shall he live again?" Scarcely 
one doubts it — perhaps not one. 

We often lose sight of the fact that we know 
so little in our exultations over what we do 
know, whereas there should be in us a profound 
humility that our knowledge is so circum- 
scribed; and yet with that humility we may 



212 INSIDE THE GATES. 

cherish a desire to know all things. Our 
knowledge of the universe in which we live is 
fittingly compared to looking at objects in a 
glass. We see images, dim and shadowy, of 
things in heaven and things in earth; but often 
only images. Nothing is seen in perfection. 
We behold the outlines, the forms, and these 
only. It was well said, "Now we see through 
a glass darkly." O, the invisible world! 

The knowledge which the world possesses 
has come slowly. The powers or forces of 
nature should have been better understood ages 
ago. That they were not is because men have 
been so sordid, selfish, brutish. And conse- 
quently we have not been able to grapple with 
nature, whose secrets are so deeply hidden. 
Then, too, the limited knowledge we have is 
apparent in the fact that we are always rectify- 
ing our mistakes. New discoveries are being 
made constantly. The machines we use to-day 
will be superseded by other and better ones a 
few years hence. That which satisfies us now 
will fail to satisfy us by and by. Laws are 
made this year, to be repealed next. Society 
outgrows its old bounds in every place. The 
present generation laughs at the generations 
gone by; and we in turn will be laughed at for 
our frailties, no less than our follies. 



DARKNESS AND LIGHT. 21 3 

But I have spoken of the subordination of 
our knowledge to the ends of virtue and of 
development. It is most evident that we are 
put here for a purpose which has reference to 
ourselves. It does not seem reasonable to sup- 
pose that our Heavenly Father needed man, 
as he is on this earth, for His own glory alone. 
He could have peopled this globe with angels 
robed in garments of light and beauty. Nor do 
I believe it was for the earth, to make it beau- 
tiful and good, that man w r as placed here; for 
God had power to make the earth as beautiful 
as heaven is declared to be, and to keep it so 
forever. I conclude, hence, that man's own 
good was the chief end, and that end his devel- 
opment in intellectual power and in moral good- 
ness, and therefore that his knowledge should 
contribute to his virtue. Let us see. Why 
does knowledge not flow into the mind, as 
water flows into natural depressions ? Why 
was not the whole universe so planned that, 
when the child is born into the world, some 
battery having thought -giving power should 
charge it to fullness of wisdom by a single 
touch? Why are we not born, like Minerva in 
classic story, from the brain of some great 
Jupiter, in full development? I can furnish an 
answer to this question, if to no other. God 



214 INSIDE THE GATES. 

did not so plan our being. A higher and more 
glorious end was to be subserved in our 
creation. 

We come into life with every thing to learn. 
Jesus, on the human side of his nature, "grew 
in wisdom and stature." We may easily see 
that whatever nature has in her storehouse is 
under lock and key; but the guardian angel 
gives us the key, and bids us open and enter. 
There is positively nothing hid from the grasp 
of the mind, in its ultimate mastery. There is 
not a principle which will not yet be made 
plain. The bottom of the sea may yet be pho- 
tographed. A telescope can be made, and will 
be, capable of solving all the problems of the 
starry world. The mind of man is equal to the 
comprehension of all science, if unlimited time 
be given. And that dim outline on which we 
look to-day will grow ever brighter, until all 
things shall be revealed, even the deep things 
of eternity. 

But this gathering of strength is not without 
toil. Do we need valuable minerals for our 
use? they are confined far down in the earth, 
where man must burrow his way to obtain 
them. Why were they not strewn over the 
earth, to be merely picked up? Then we 
should not have had the development of strength 



DARKNESS AND LIGHT. 21 5 

which the seeking gives us, nor the cultivation 
of wisdom and prudence acquired in the search. 
For ages God said, Behold my lightning playing 
on the clouds, use it. Man looked, wondered, 
and waited, until gradually, after many trials, 
he found out its use. Why did not the Lord 
put up the telegraph-poles just where he knew 
they would be needed, and stretch on them the 
wire, by the "word of his power," ready for 
our use, as he surely could have done? He 
left it for us to discover the metal, learn how to 
draw the wire, find out the non-conductor, as- 
certain the mode of generating electricity, and 
the art of applying it to our use, because of the 
benefit it is for us to determine, by our own 
mental actions, these great principles of nature. 
And so of all that concerns us. Activity is 
demanded — it is a law of our being. Where 
one word of God could have directed us to the 
greatest blessings of life, we are left to toil and 
build through the weary years ; then to tear 
down what we have built, and build over again. 
He says to all men, "Toil on." He bids us 
think our way through mazes of difficulties, 
and grope our way out into light through 
deepest darkness. The human spirit, in these 
struggles, might almost complain at its hard 
lot, did we not know that in this activity of 



2l6 INSIDE THE GATES. 

brain and hand the Father has some plan whose 
workings shall bring good to human nature. 

" Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take; 
The clouds ye so much dread 
Are big with mercy, and shall break 
In blessings on your head." 

All these disappointments of our life, these 
reverses which we meet, these sad bereavements 
we call disasters — they are not such — should not 
always be looked at from the dark side; for 
they are only the stony road to the hill of 
ascension. They lead to our Olivet, where we 
receive our glory. 

Why has not the Father made all spiritual 
truth unmistakably plain at a glance. I answer, 
For the same reason that he has veiled in mys- 
tery the truths of the outward world of matter. 
He will have us think constantly, patiently, and 
by the thinking grow stronger. The injunction 
is laid upon us to "search the Scriptures/ ' 
rather than merely to read them carelessly. 
They are deep, and only to the searcher comes 
the mine of their wealth. But, lest we miss of 
heaven, he has made the essential part so plain 
that "the wayfaring man, though a fool, need 
not err therein.'' The sea is so vast and deep 
that mighty ships are borne upon its bosom, 
and yet it spreads out its waters on the shores 



DARKNESS AND LIGHT. 217 

so shallow that a child may wade into it. And 
so the Word of God has depths for the strongest 
intellect, and yet comes down to the compre- 
hension of a child. 

Then we see that our knowledge of nature, 
of God, of ourselves — in short, of all things — is 
subordinated to our goodness. The active arm 
is strongest — the used eye sees best. Our phys- 
ical organization demands activity as a condition 
of health. People who go through the world 
without feeling the thrill of thought, the mere 
drones of life, are violating the first laws of 
their being. I believe that many are sick be- 
cause their minds are too inactive. Health 
means the right use of all our powers. The 
body needs the stimulus of the mind; that is 
its normal relation. Labor, whether of head or 
hand or heart, not only develops us in point 
of power, but it promotes virtue. Who, I ask, 
commit the crimes which fester in society? 
Who are the men who plunder, and plot de- 
struction? Not the hardy sons of toil, who 
feel that it is God-like to earn their bread by 
the "sweat of their brow." Not the men and 
women whose thoughts dwell on the great 
truths which God has stored up in the universe. 
Not they whose hearts beat with love for hu- 
manity. Not those who are ever expectant of 



2l8 INSIDE THE GATES. 

the glories which shall be revealed. No; but 
the idlers by the wayside of life. Thinking is a 
virtuous act. 

But by this condition of our being, that de- 
mands toil, that sends men climbing the mount- 
ains, delving into the earth after its concealed 
treasures, patiently thinking out the problems 
of life, discovering the unseen, making life's 
reckonings beneath cloudy skies, as the ship 
rolls and heaves in its voyage, does God thus 
speak our destiny? I answer, Yes. The uni- 
verse was made for thoughtful beings, such as 
we. This mighty volume is spread out for us 
to read, to understand. The wisest man who 
walks the earth this hour is only in the infant- 
school of God, learning the simplest lessons. 
But his mission is to learn on. He is to be 
advanced to sublime heights of knowledge in 
the future of his being. The world is yet to be 
unfolded to the mind of the race. There is not 
a truth of matter, or of spirit, which is not yet 
to be known. The mission of the human in- 
tellect, in this world even, is to know all things 
pertaining to the world, to understand every 
mystery, to have control of every force, and to 
use for its' own advancement every substance 
which God has made. There are yet to be 
discoveries in science of which we have not at 



DARKNESS AND LIGHT. 2I9 

present even the remotest conception. Nor will 
the earth be destroyed until this grand mission 
of humanity is fulfilled; for in the beginning 
God gave man " dominion " over the sea, the 
air, and the earth, with power to " multiply and 
replenish and subdue the earth." Then, too, in 
this all-conquering effort, men shall rise to 
higher virtue. This wonderful elevation will 
ennoble the heart of the race, and thus the very 
earth itself contribute to our redemption, all 
things working together for our good. 

But what about the knowledge we shall have 
in the future ! A little while ago I was speaking 
of the limitation of our knowledge in the pres- 
ent life, and I tried to show that the wisest 
of mankind know comparatively little, that all 
we do know is expressed by the words of an 
apostle as seeing " through a glass darkly." 
And yet there is another side to be viewed. 
The human mind is most wonderful in its 
powers. When I say that a map has been con- 
structed of the bottom of the sea, where light 
has not even penetrated, and which no eye has 
seen but the eye of the Omniscient One; when 
I state that the metallic substances which enter 
into the composition of a star, so distant from 
us that a ray of light, traveling through space 
at the rate of nearly two hundred thousand 



220 INSIDE THE GATES. 

miles in a second of time, will not reach us in 
some hundreds of years, can yet be told with 
accuracy; when I state that mathematical sci- 
ence can point out the precise moment when 
the shadow of an eclipse fell on the Pyramids 
of Egypt in the days of the Pharaohs; when 
these things are viewed as mere indications of 
the powers of the mind now, we naturally ask, 
What will be the future of the intellect when 
these dull bodies, that now hamper and fetter 
us, shall be thrown off? When, in pure spirit- 
ual life, we stand in eternity, "then shall we 
know, even as also we are known." The deep 
mysteries that now perplex these understandings 
shall vanish away, as the frost melts in the 
morning sun. The problems over which our 
brains have fairly reeled in their efforts shall be 
as clear as day. The earth, the sky, the high- 
est heavens, all shall lie open before our gaze. 
Light shall flash on the soul from the throne of 
the Eternal. "The Lord God giveth them light, 
and they shall reign for ever and ever." No 
object shall be too minute for our inspection : 
that which the physical eye can not see now — 
the invisible — the soul's eye shall yet see. We 
look up into space, and, lo, what majesty ap- 
pears in those myriad stars! I have fancied it 
was in the night season, on the shores of Tiberias, 



DARKNESS AND LIGHT. 221 

when Jesus, pointing up to these stars, said to 
his disciples, "In my Father's house are many 
mansions;" as if he had said, "All these are 
mine." We look with wonder on them now; 
we shall yet visit them. We look through the 
astronomer's glass, and far out in space, so far 
that no arithmetic can express the distance so 
that we shall comprehend it. Yet on the wings 
of our spirits we shall go out into these fields, 
farther than any telescope has power to reach. 
We shall visit every room in God's great pal- 
ace; for "when that which is perfect is come, 
then that which is in part shall be done away." 
We shall read the past history of the universe, 
as it is written in lines of light all over the 
worlds. Thought will be as free to roam as the 
sun-ray is free in its passag'e through ethereal 
spaces. "Then shall we know, even as also we 
are known." Every science shall be mastered 
in the mind-life of every redeemed soul. Every 
principle of the universe, whether of matter or 
spirit, shall be fully understood. 

The only depth which will remain unfath- 
omed, and unfathomable, will be that of In- 
finity. The finite shall never fully know the 
Infinite; and yet into that sea of Infinite Being 
the soul will sink its plummet of thought 
deeper and deeper, without ever the possibility 



222 INSIDE THE GATES. 

of touching the depth of the Great Unsearch- 
able. 

" Touching the Almighty, we can not find 
Him out." 

We all think much about the heaven to 
which we are journeying. How we have all 
looked away toward a land of rest, where the 
shadows will never fall in their gloom, where 
the spirit will never pine, where the soul 
shall dwell in purest light, and drink from 
perennial fountains the "water of life!" But 
where is heaven? This I shall consider else- 
where in this book. Now we have only to do 
with that life as it concerns our knowledge. 

How mysterious to us have been the ways 
of Providence in this world! How we have 
wondered at the dealings of God to man ! Who 
has not seen the husband separated from the 
embrace of a loving wife, the child from the 
parent, and parent from child? We can not call 
it chance or fate ; we call it Providence. But, 
as we have looked on the stricken wife and the 
fatherless children, we have said, Why is an 
event so sad permitted in a world over which a 
holy and wise God rules? And while we have 
looked and wondered and pitied, the thought 
has come to us, "Then shall I know, even as 
also I am known." Ah, our knowledge shall 



DARKNESS AND LIGHT. 223 

extend through fields greater and more wonder- 
ful than mere science. It shall take in its 
sweep a wider range, that of immortal destinies 
and the ways of God. We shall understand 
the mysteries of redemption, which the angels 
desired to look into, and were not able, because 
they could not experience redeeming grace. 
How we have wondered at the mysterious plan 
of salvation, the shedding of blood for human 
sin, the sufferings of Christ, the strange union 
of divinity with humanity, and the resurrection 
of the dead. O how wonderful ! Yet all these 
shall be plain to us when we appear before 
God in the upper kingdom. 

And then, how often has the question been 
asked, Shall we know each other in heaven? 
Who can doubt it? We shall see the Lord of 
glory, face to face ; we shall behold patriarchs, 
prophets, apostles, martyrs, and saints, of 
whom we have read. We shall see them ; we 
shall hold sweet converse with them — yes, and 
know them. Surely, we shall know each other 
there, even better than we do in this life. It 
can not be that we shall know less there than 
we do here. There are those there this day 
whom we love, who walk in white. They are 
before the throne of God ; they wait, fondly 
wait for our coming. Shall we know them — ■ 



224 INSIDE THE GATES. 

they us? Vain question. The husband and 
wife, long parted, shall meet each other; the 
parent and child shall join in happy spiritual 
union. Friends long separated from each other 
shall reunite, in bonds never more to be 
broken. 

We can afford to toil up the steep ascent, 
the rugged cliffs of life. We can afford to fight 
heroically on every battle-field of the flesh, for 
the winning day will come. We can afford to 
wait patiently for the morning of our true life, 
for its coming bringeth joy. We can afford to 
labor hard in the search after our true wealth; 
for its finding is certain, and its value untold. 
God has bottled thy tears. He has numbered 
thy sighs and counted all thy sorrows, and thy 
labors are not lost. "He that goeth forth and 
weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless 
come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves 
with him." Now poor, then rich; now ignorant, 
then wise ; now sick, then well ; now bound, then 
free ; now in darkness, then in light. Here mor- 
tal, there immortal; here weak, there strong; 
here in danger, there in safety. 

In the words of that eminent lady, Hannah 
More, I close this chapter: 

" Here my best thoughts are stained with guilt and fear; 
But love and pardon shall be perfect there. 



DARKNESS AND LIGHT. 225 

Here my best duties are defiled with sin ; 
There all is ease without and peace within. 
Here feeble faith supplies my only light ; 
There faith and hope are swallowed up of sight. 
Here things, as in a glass, are darkly shown ; 
There I shall know as clearly as I 'm known. 
Here error clouds the will and dims the sight ; 
There all is knowledge, purity, and light. 
Here, so imperfect is this mortal state, 
If blest myself, I mourn some other's fate ; 
At every human woe I here repine ; 
The joy of every saint shall there be mine. 
Here on no promised good can I depend ; 
But there the Rock of Ages is my friend. 
Here, if some sudden joy delight inspire, 
The dread to lose it damps the rising fire ; 
But there, whatever good the soul employ, 
The thought that 't is eternal crowns the joy." 

15 







lip jltluaj JBroraj* 



" All is of God! If he but wave his hand 

The mists collect, the rain falls thick and loud, 
Till with a smile of light on sea and land, 

Lo ! he looks back from the departing cloud. 
Angels of life and death alike are his; 

Without his leave they pass no threshold o'er. 
Who then would wish or dare, believing this, 

Against his messengers to shut the door?" 



' O God omnipotent! who in me wrought 
This conscious world, whose ever-growing orb, 
When the dead past shall all in time absorb, 
Will be but as begun— O, of thine own, 
Give of the holy light that veils thy throne, 
That darkness be not mine, to take my place 
Beyond the reach of light, a blot in space ! 
So may this wondrous life, from sin made free, 
Reflect thy love for aye; and to thy glory be." 



XI. 




m 



%9 



¥\e gilvef fining. 



T was a severe trial to my feelings 
to lay away the forms of my dear 
children in the grave, and to know 
that they must decay, to know that I 
could never see them again until I too 
entered the Summer land of immortality, 
that the little precious bodies must dis- 
solve back into original elements and 
disappear. It was quite hard to think 
of those little, and once sensitive, bodies 
as being away off in the cemetery, under 
the snows of Winter. No affectionate 
parent ever yet went through this experience 
without feeling the keenness of the grief; and 
no intelligent and trustful one ever did this 
without feeling, after all, that it was God's plan, 
and therefore was right and best. 






229 



230 INSIDE THE GATES. 

" I murmur not; I know that thou 

In righteousness hast worked thy will; 
Beneath thy chastening hand I bow, 
And trust thee as my refuge still." 

The question with us is not what the Infinite 
Father might have done, but what he has done, 
in arranging things for his children in this world. 

I think it was La Place, the great French 
mathematician, who irreverently said that if 
God had consulted him when he made the 
universe, he could at least have offered him 
some good suggestions. Well, possibly, after 
all, he was as much entitled to the merit of 
frankness as chargeable with the sin of blas- 
phemy; for I find, from my observations of 
human nature, very often the existence of these 
same feelings in others, only that they are dif- 
ferently expressed. Indeed, there are very few 
of us who have not at times felt, if we have not 
given expression to, the murmuring spirit — we, 
too, would have things otherwise than they are. 
What father buries his child away from his sight 
without wishing it were otherwise? 

But let me direct your thoughts for a mo- 
ment to this world, in which we "live, move, 
and have our being. " I am frank to admit that 
I would not have constructed the earth as it is. 
Mark you, I do not say I could have made a 



THE SILVER LINING. 23 1 

better one. But then, would I have made the 
earth with such extremes of heat and cold? 
Would I have wrapped one portion in perpetual 
snow and ice, and another in belts of almost 
unendurable heat? Would I have spread out 
vast deserts of sand and rock, mocking at the 
life of man and beast? Would I have set the 
earth itself into tremors with pent-up forces 
within, often making the habitations of mankind 
a desolation by the outbursting of volcanic fires ? 
Would I have so placed the earth in space as 
to make one-half of the year in one latitude a 
cheerless Winter, enrobing every thing in the 
garments of at least seeming death, while in 
another portion the people should be doomed 
to swelter in unabating tropical heat? Would I 
have sent men digging into the earth thousands 
of feet, to find the articles needful for human 
comfort and use? Would I have sent men 
climbing the mountain heights and braving 
ocean dangers, to hold companionship, or carry 
on necessary trade with each other? Take it 
to yourself. Would you have destined man- 
kind to be the slaves of toil, and the helpless 
victims of disease and death? Would you 
have sent the widow forth to battle lone-handed 
with the hardships of life? O no. Left to 
you and me, dear reader, the world would 



232 INSIDE THE GATES. 

have been very different from what we now 
find it. 

But then, let us remember that we would 
have constructed things with reference only to 
the present. God has made them in view of 
the future, and for the good of all. We would 
have planned for our ease and selfishness. God 
has planned for the spiritual development of his 
children in "the life that now is, and in that 
which is to come." We would have made the 
world, as man makes every thing else, full of 
contradictions and mistakes. He has made it 
on a model as far above our thoughts as he, 
the Infinite himself, is above us in the attributes 
of his glorious being. He has placed us here, 
amid icy poles and burning tropics, to burrow 
in the mountain side and battle with the angry 
billows. He has put us w T here earthquakes 
rock, and where tempests beat, and where de- 
struction wastes and pestilences walk, and where 
the stricken tree-bough drops, and where the 
subtile poison lurks in the cup of the beautiful 
flower, where sickness blanches the cheek of 
youth, and death palsies the arm of the strong 
man. He has placed us where Winter wraps 
us in his chilly mantle, where frozen fetters 
bind the energies of man, and where Summer 
heats scorch and blister and kill, until the very 



THE SILVER LINING. 233 

earth at times seems to call in the ear of God 
with a cry of distress. 

But then, these very conditions point us to 
some more congenial clime, some "better land." 
These all point to a life not measured, nor yet 
measurable, with the years of our present life. 
Nature is ever pointing us to something beyond. 
We need something which this world is too 
poor, alas ! to give us. It will not do for us, 
then, to charge God with folly; to lay on his 
works the little rule of our feeble judgment, 
and say, Why hast thou done this? or, Why 
hast thou made us so? It is well that over all 
the universe one Supreme Mind has sway; that 
all things were made and are upheld by one 
whose wisdom and love equal his power. 

I went to my dear child's grave in the early 
Spring, and, as I sat there musing, the beauti- 
ful words of Solomon came to my mind with 
much comfort: "For, lo, the Winter is past, 
the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear 
on the earth ; the time of the singing of birds is 
come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in 
our land; the fig-tree putteth forth her green 
figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a 
good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and 
come away." As I sat there by my dead, and 
thought of the present and the future, of death 



234 INSIDE THE GATES. 

and of the resurrection, I was impressed with 
these beautiful words. Their spiritual meaning 
came up in my mind, and gave the cloud a 
beautiful lining of silvery brightness. 

Solomon wrote of Palestine, where the Win- 
ters have in them nothing of the severity which 
is peculiar to this cold climate of ours. There 
the Winters were, rather, " rainy seasons," with 
snow occasionally in small quantities. Only on 
the lofty mountain peak was it ever abundant. 
"The rain is over and gone," meant that Win- 
ter was past, and that Summer had once more 
come, with its warm breath, over all the land. 
Palestine was a land of flowers. They grew so 
abundantly, and were so rich and variegated, 
that they gave the face of the country a peculiar 
and charming tint. "The flowers appear on 
the earth," meant that beautiful Summer had 
come with its cheer. 

God has sent his birds every-where. As a 
sort of living pendulum, they swing with the 
sun from north to south, and south to north 
again. In every land these heralds of sunny 
days, these forerunning messengers of the har- 
vest-time, the musicians of nature, make vocal 
hill and dale, grove and garden, forest and 
meadow, with hymns of praise which the Great 
Father hears and accepts. "The time of the 



THE SILVER LINING. 235 

singing of birds is come." And then that 
plaintive cooing of the turtle-dove had a pecul- 
iar and thrilling significance. It was the un- 
failing sign of harvest, and gave assurance of 
God's goodness in sending promised blessings 
of fruitful fields. "The voice of the turtle is 
heard in our land." 

Then was the time for the buds to burst, 
and the blossoms to open in all their beauty 
and richness, and send their fragrance on the 
passing breeze. Then was the time for the 
fruit to form on the pendent boughs, and grow 
to lusciousness in figs, in grapes; in our land, 
in apples, pears, plums, peaches, cherries. 
"The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and 
the vines with the tender grape give a good 
smell." 

No one can fail to appreciate the coming of 
Summer. How sweet and cheery, how buoy- 
ant and hopeful, is Summer! and how impatient 
we become as she seems to linger, while the 
cold winds blow from the north, and the clouds 
hang in heavy, somber masses in the sky, and 
the buds seem to shrivel, and birds hide away 
in nook and cranny, and we sit, with closed 
doors and crackling fires, wearied with in- 
door life ! And is it to be wondered at 
that people sigh for Summer breezes and 



2$6 INSIDE TH£ GATES. 

sunshine, rippling waters and the melody of 
birds? 

But this impatient nature of ours soon tires 
of the sun-ray, the long, hot days, the dry and 
sultry atmosphere, and the dust, which, in spite 
of all our modern improvements, will creep 
through every crevice, insinuating its unwel- 
come presence into every drawer, which soils 
the clean linen, settles without leave or license 
on every shelf, covers the gilt of the mirror, 
and tarnishes your purest china — I say, this 
impatient human nature, that becomes so weary 
of Winter, with its damp and snow and cold, is 
soon equajly wearied with dryness, dust, and 
heat. The pleasure -seeker complains of the 
shower which spoils the evening drive, and the 
farmer murmurs at the "dry spell" that threat- 
ens his crops. We all sit in our heated cham- 
bers, fanning ourselves, and panting, and sighing 
for some cooler place. What an unsatisfied 
thing human nature is! If it never rained until 
all were agreed as to time, place, and quantity, 
the earth would parch. It would not be possi- 
ble, with our present constitutions, for even 
God to create a climate to please every body. 
Some prefer Winter's cold, others luxuriate in 
Summer's heat. 

We should remember that our Heavenly 



THE SILVER LINING. 237 

Father has not consulted the tastes and wishes 
of any one class of persons, but has arranged 
the universe so as to subserve the greatest good 
of the greatest number; and often the present 
seeming good of the individual is lost in the 
greater good of the whole. It is better that 
one should suffer than many. 

The coming of Summer, after a long and 
tedious Winter, must always impress upon our 
minds one thought in particular; namely, that 
of God's providential care over the world, and 
over us. Look out on the earth in Winter- 
time, when the snows are on the ground, w T hen 
the leaves are off the trees, and not one green 
blade of grass is seen in all the earth about us, 
and the earth itself is frozen, and the chill 
blast sweeps and howls, and the gardens and 
fields are desolate. Did we not know that this 
is one of nature's methods, we would turn away 
tearfully, as from her funeral pyre. 

But we know, by our experience and obser- 
vation, that this dead shall live again ; that these 
boughs shall put forth their leaves and blossoms ; 
that these branches shall bear fruit in the season 
which God has appointed. We know there is 
a power in nature, a vital force, which may be 
suspended without being extinct — a power we 
can best see in its effects. 



238 INSIDE THE GATES. 

Now, sitting here by the grave, in the soft 
days of the beautiful Spring, I am led to think 
of these ways of God. There are evidences all 
around us in our life of an unseen intelligent 
power, a power which glows in the sun, sparkles 
in the diamond, throbs in the wave-pulse of the 
mighty ocean, blooms in the rose, flashes in the 
lightning's gleam! yes, a power which comes to 
us, moves in our life, governs our being, con- 
soles us in the time of our troubles, quickens our 
spiritual natures, feeds us, cheers us, and draws 
us heavenward, as the sun draws up the green 
grass to carpet the earth when the snows are 
gone. That power is God, our Heavenly Fa- 
ther. He is in all things. 

He who can make the grass spring out of 
the hardened soil, and cause the roots to send 
forth their stalks, and the boughs their foliage 
and fruits, he can raise us up also to a new life. 
He can take our feet out of the "horrible pit" 
of sin, and place them on the Rock of Ages. 
He can make our lives radiant. There is a 
power at work in human hearts to make them 
bloom in the beauty of spiritual Summer, just 
as surely as there is a sun which dissolves the 
snows or chases away the darkness of night. 
There is a power which comes to enrobe us in 
garments of the true life. The ever -blessed 



THE SILVER LINING. 239 

Gospel of Jesus, which tells of the resurrection 
of the dead and the immortality of the soul, is 
the Summer-time of the great world's cycle. 

But the coming forth of Summer indicates to 
the mind not only this personal resurrection 
from spiritual death in the soul, but it symbol- 
izes the final and glorious resurrection of the 
pure in heart to eternal life. I do not say that 
the coming forth of vegetation in Spring-time 
proves that the soul is immortal, or that the 
dead shall rise, but I do say that it proves the 
possibility of such a coming forth. 

Go and stand in yonder cemetery during the 
last days of Winter. The white tombstones all 
around tell of the dear departed, whose pulseless 
breasts are there beneath the ground. The leaf- 
less branches which swing to and fro, and the 
crisped grass which crackles beneath your foot- 
fall tell of the departed life which gave verdure 
and blossom in the days gone by. Then, as 
yo'u stand there, ask, Shall these dead, from be- 
neath these mounds, come forth to a new life? 
Ask one who disbelieves the Scriptures, and he 
tells you it will be impossible; ask another, and 
he will tell you it is not probable; ask still an- 
other, and he will tell you it is a great mystery. 
But, I ask, dares any man say the dead can not 
live again? Can not the power that once gave 



24O INSIDE THE GATES. 

them life and being give it back again? Is it 
mysterious? So is life in any form a mystery. 
And while you stand there amid the lonely 
tombstones, questioning yourself about the 
long-departed, asking, "If a man die, shall he 
live again?" — and skepticism says, No, and out- 
right infidelity sneers at the credulity of the 
Christian who puts confidence in these prom- 
ises — the winds die out, the soft South breezes 
set to quivering the leafless branches, the warm 
rain distills upon the soil from benignant skies, 
the great sun swings relatively nearer, and these 
lifeless trees begin to grow green, the buds 
burst out into leaves and flowers, the earth 
itself grows warm and heaves her bosom ; the 
grass, like a new creation, comes forth in 
beauty; and all nature in a few short days has 
passed over from seeming death to life; all is 
changed from cheerless Winter to blushing, 
blooming, fragrant, and lovely Summer. 

I say now, with emphasis, that the power 
adequate to the production of this change in 
the natural world is equal to the accomplish- 
ment of all that is affirmed in the Christian 
Scriptures concerning the resurrection of the 
dead, and the mystery of the one is not any 
greater than that of the other. We have seen 
the resurrection of vegetation, and we believe it 



THE SILVER LINING. 24 1 

possible because Ave have seen it. The resur- 
rection of dead bodies we have not seen; but 
the possibility of such an event no one dares 
call in question who believes in the existence 
of an omnipotent God, and who is observant 
of nature. Its probability no one will question 
who believes in the Scriptures. No more 
clearly does the Bible say there shall be Sum- 
mer and Winter, seed-time and harvest, while 
the earth remains, than it declares we shall rise 
from the dead in some mysterious way. Rea- 
son, in her loftiest dicta, declares it possible; 
analogy, in her many forms, confirms the voice 
of reason. 

And so, sitting at my graves in Spring-time, 
I believe my dear children will rise again, in 
God's way, and in God's time. 

" And they, new rising from the tomb, 
In luster brighter far shall shine; 
Revive with ever. -during bloom, 
Safe from diseases and decline. " 

As the Winter has passed away, and the 

flowers and birds have come, and the vine puts 

forth her tender branches, so may a Summer 

come in every human life. These restless 

and impatient natures, under the leadings of 

God, may become more trustful. These heavy 

burdens of life shall grow lighter as we become 

16 



242 INSIDE THE GATES. 

stronger in faith and purer in heart. These 
clouds, which so often hang with sullen and 
threatening gloominess in our sky, shall become 
pillars of fire to light us on our way through the 
dark nights of our life -journey. These trials 
shall test our faith, and make us holier. These 
temptations shall be sources of moral power; 
for as we overcome them we gain strength. 
These troubles and sad bereavements shall, in 
the Father's hand, fashion us into spiritual 
beauty. These hard days and weary nights 
shall be made in some way to yield us sunny 
hours of sweet repose. These partings shall 
only serve to draw us toward the land where 
our dear ones are safely housed, where the 
Winter blast cometh never, and the tear will 
not dim the eye. O yes! The Winter, with 
its coldness, will pass away; the Summer of 
life's better day will come. God has prom- 
ised it. The flowers will bloom in fadeless 
beauty. The sky will know no cloud. Death 
shall be unknown. Sin and sorrow shall be 
banished. Light, above the brightness of the 
sun, shall shine upon us. "And God shall 
wipe away all tears from their eyes." 



Iitr Immuijkl filters* 



" I have learned 
This doctrine from the vanishing of youth. 
The pictured primer, true, is thrown aside ; 
But its first lesson liveth in my heart. 
I shall go on through all eternity. 
Thank God ! I only am an embryo still, 
The small beginning of a glorious soul, 
An atom that shall fill immensity. " 



" Here is no bootless quest; 

The city's name is Rest. 

Here shall no fear appal ; 

Here love is all in all ; 
Here shalt thou win thy ardent soul's desire; 
Here clothe thee in thy beautiful attire. 

Lift, lift thy wondering eyes ! 

Yonder is Paradise ! 

And this fair, shining band 

Are spirits of that land ! 
And these that throng to meet thee are thy kin, 
Who have awaited thee, redeemed from sin. 
The city gates unfold; enter, O enter in!" 



XII. 




Ouf Immortal ^titui'e. 

HE Scriptures unfold to us many 

sublime and beautiful doctrines. 

The correspondence between what we 

naturally crave and what the blessed 

Gospel teaches is so marked as to force 

upon us the conviction of design. No 

more certainly is the eye adapted to the 

beam of light, or light made for the eve, 

than are the truths set forth in the Bible 

precisely suited to the varied cravings of 

universal humanity. 

Furthermore, among all these great truths 

of the Bible, no one has a greater interest to us 

all than that which relates to our immortal 

future. That we are all passing away, is a trite 

saying. Death, whatever that word means, is in 

our world. The funeral cortege, the new-made 

grave, the mourning weed, are 

245 



A 



sights of our 



246 INSIDE THE GATES. 

every-day life. But is death the end? Is there 
a realm beyond the grave? St. Paul, in one 
'place, exhorts us to look away from things seen 
to things unseen. He evidently believed in a 
life beyond the grave. In another place that 
same writer spoke of our body as a tabernacle 
that can be " dissolved/' taken to pieces; but 
then he also tells us of our "house which is 
from heaven." As the temple at Jerusalem was 
to supersede the tabernacle of the wilderness, so 
when we quit this life -journey there awaits us a 
' 'building of God, an house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens." I say, then, it 
is true that we are to live on. As a majestic 
steamer glides along the river channel, and, 
sweeping around the curve, disappears from 
sight, so, when our friends die, they have just 
passed the bend in life's great river. To die is 
only to change; to take another step in life. 
Death has taken the place of translation in our 
world. We were born into this world, and 
through death we shall be born out of it and 
into the next. Death is the gateway to our 
glorious and immortal future. Life does not 
mean a certain number of years. Our life is 
not limited and confined to the present world; 
but it began when we began to be, and it shall 
go on and on for evermore. 



OUR IMMORTAL FUTURE. 247 

Then we must conclude there is nothing in 
death to fear. It is not so much death as judg- 
ment which we dread. Death may be attended 
with physical pain; but nature makes provision, 
in a benumbed sensibility, for this. The child 
knows nothing of its birth ; perhaps we shall be 
born into our new life without feeling the pains 
which so many dread. Take away sin, and 
there is nothing to fear in dying. "The sting 
of death is sin." It is a blessed truth that we 
are to live on. Our dear friends, who have parted 
from us are ours yet. This idea of our per- 
petual existence is something veritable ; it is not 
a fiction of the imagination ; it is not a mere 
tradition which has come down to us through 
the ages. It is not more certain that we grow 
hungry for food, or that we become wean- and 
need rest, than it is true that all men expect to 
live in some sphere beyond the grave. The 
great procession of human life moves toward 
the grave with a solemn tread — the old, the 
young, the wise, the unwise, the good, the bad, 
the prince, the beggar, the civilized, the savage ; 
but all go there believing in the great hereafter. 
Mankind can not be educated out of this belief. 
That has been tried. Time may convert men 
into giants or pigmies; climate may completely 
change the color ; and habit, that determined 



248 INSIDE THE GATES. 

ruler of our species, may create a new psycho- 
logical man. He may live in palace or hut, 
amid polar snows or burning tropics; but the 
thought of the great hereafter of his being he 
never loses. It goes with him by land and by 
sea. It comforts him in the camp of the soldier 
and in the shop of the artisan. Rob him of all 
he owns; reduce him to want, to slavery; but 
upward he gazes into the heavens, and believes 
that he shall dwell there in some blessed estate. 
Pope said of the "untutored Indian •.' , 

" And thinks, admitted to yon equal sky, 
His faithful dog shall bear him company." 

There is in the human mind a natural desire 
to know. Logic is only the true order of 
thinking, a way of getting at the reason of 
things. If it is true that we are immortal, how 
shall we know it? Is it knowable? If it be 
true that they whom we call dead are living in 
some other and higher sphere of being; that we 
too shall arrive at that state, meet them, know 
them, converse with them, and love them, — what 
truth could be more lofty and inspiring? The 
thought thrills the soul, and makes every thing 
else seem small and unimportant. 

If man is immortal, it must be, then, because 
of the creative act of God. His immortality is 



OUR IMMORTAL FUTURE. 249 

an endowment of life. The soul or spirit life 
of mankind is as much of an observable phe- 
nomenon as the bodily life. We know of the 
properties of matter. We are conversant with 
the animal instincts ; we define them ; we write 
books about them. Who will say we are defin- 
ing and writing about nothing? We write about 
this universal expectation of a future life, this 
perpetual and unsatisfied longing. Who will 
look away out over this longing and expectant 
world, and say the millions are cherishing a 
hope never to be realized? To doubt immor- 
tality is to doubt nature itself; to deny it is to 
deny the deepest convictions of the human 
soul. Those convictions come not of education ; 
they are not born of logical syllogisms. 

Immortality has its foundation in our intui- 
tions. There are some truths we know in this 
way. Such are mathematical truths, called 
axioms, which are not, properly speaking, 
within the logical realm. It needs no labored 
intellectual process to prove that the half of any 
thing is less than the whole of it. I do not 
say these self-evident truths can not be proved 
systematically, but that any attempt in that 
direction is superfluous. Let us take this matter 
of the soul's immortality into the account as an 
intuition; then I only need to say, "I know." 



250 INSIDE THE GATES. 

I may not understand how I know. / only know. 
The new-born babe, by an infallible law of its 
being, turns to its mother's breast for nourish- 
ment. That is an instinct, God's law for the 
preservation of its tender life. The child knows 
nothing of its true relations to the mother, nor 
to the surrounding world ; all these it has yet to 
learn. Now, in exactly the same way the human 
mind turns toward its higher state. We may 
not know all, as we shall by and by; but we 
look up and away to God and our future life by 
a law of our being, as surely as the child turns 
to its mother's breast for nourishment. The 
ideas of God and of the hereafter, though often 
vague, are in the mind. We need no other 
proof than that which the religious history of 
the world gives us. 

It may be said truly that mere desires and 
longings do not sufficiently prove our immortal- 
ity. I admit that a consciousness of our adapta- 
tion to another state does not prove that I am 
to possess that state. Men long after riches 
who are destined to be poor. Many a woman, 
that would grace a palace, lives in a hut. Many 
a man works in the shop, who is competent to 
be President. People desire to be happy, who 
are ever unhappy. But then, I say, these in- 
born desires, these unsatisfied longings of soul 



OUR IMMORTAL FUTURE. 251 

for another state of being; the spiritual capaci- 
ties, taken in connection with those deeper 
feelings; the thought, deep-written on the soul; 
these intuitions, which run out through all the 
life of man, which express themselves in tem- 
ples and images, flaming altars, bleeding victims, 
and solemn services ; convictions of soul that will 
be ever uppermost in human society, that will 
cling to man from the cradle to the grave; feel- 
ings of heart for which he stands ready to die ; 
I say, these, all taken together, do prove some- 
thing, after all. He who can explain away 
these facts of human life gives proof that he can 
believe any thing. The most credulous people 
of all mankind are they who can accept the 
cheerless teachings of infidelity. 

Then, let me ask, is there any thing in the 
teachings of Christianity on this point that con- 
flicts with reason? Intuitions ask no aid from 
logic. But still, let us not decry reason. On 
the other hand, we should always be ready to 
give "a reason for the hope that is within us. " 
Every one who reasons upon this question, and 
accepts the general facts of human life, must 
come to the point of belief irr the spiritual, and 
Hence in the doctrine of immortality. 

The particular kind of argument so generally 
made use of here is the analogical. It has been 



252 INSIDE THE GATES. 

said by some that analogy proves nothing. 
This is sometimes true, but not always so. I 
find in my studies of nature that a crawling 
worm is transformed into a beautiful butterfly, 
which sweeps gracefully and airily about as on 
wings of light. The butterfly is only the worm, 
transmuted, expanded, beautified. Here, now, 
is a fact which can not be denied. But what 
has this to do with our immortality? It does 
not prove that my child is living, or that I shall 
live again in some glorified state, any more than 
it proves that my horse or dog shall live again. 
But then, here is an effect; where is the cause? 
What power is there to transform the butterfly? 
Is it only a blind principle in nature which 
works out a result so grand? That can not be. 
Our sense revolts at such a conclusion. There 
is a benevolent, a wise, a powerful God, Creator 
of all things. He it is who transformed the 
worm. Then, may he not work out some such 
change in us? May not we too pass into our 
chrysalis state, and come forth on wings? The 
power which transforms the worm can change 
you. Here, in the Fatherhood of God, there is 
an adequate intelligence, adequate goodness and 
power. Hence, there is in this a possibility 
which must be admitted; and thus I find an 
answer to the objection brought against the 



OUR IMMORTAL FUTURE. 253 

doctrine of the resurrection. Now, before any 
one can reasonably affirm an impossibility that 
any such thing can occur, he must dispose of 
this testimony of nature. 

Analogy may not in itself rise to the highest 
form of proof; but, taken in connection with 
the plain teachings of Scripture, with the intui- 
tions of the mind, and along with the experi- 
ences of Christians for these ages, it does prove 
something, after all. It was in this light an 
apostle spoke the words: "For we know that, 
if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dis- 
solved, we have a building of God, a house not 
made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 

This immortal principle in humanity is like 
the vital germ in a grain of wheat — it is life 
itself, and life-giving. A grain of wheat may 
be sealed up in a vase, and kept from sunshine 
and from rain, and thus never produce its like; 
so the human spirit may be fettered by the 
bonds of superstition, perverted by sin, stifled 
with unbelief, and literally crushed out of being. 
The vital germ in the grain of wheat can only 
fulfill its mission when all the conditions essen- 
tial to its proper development are met. There 
must be congenial soil, moisture, and a certain 
degree of warmth, or it will only decay in the 
ground. So the human soul can only rise to its 



254 INSIDE THE GATES. 

true state by education, by spiritual baptism, 
God dwelling in man makes him grandly, glori- 
ously immortal. 

Intimately related to the question of our 
immortality is that other subject which puzzles 
so many, the resurrection of the dead. The old 
question of Greek philosophy, propounded two 
thousand years ago, is asked by the material 
philosophers of to-day: "How are the dead 
raised up? and with what body do they come?" 
Let us look into it a moment. No doctrine is 
set forth by the Savior and by the apostles with 
more emphasis than that of the resurrection of 
the dead. "The hour is coming, and now is, 
when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son 
of God, and they that hear shall live. 
Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in 
the which all that are in the graves shall hear 
his voice, and shall come forth; they that have 
done good, unto the resurrection of life; and 
they that have done evil, unto the resurrection 
of damnation." (John v, 25-29.) "It is sown 
a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." 
(1 Cor. xv, 44.) Equally certain is it written, 
"Flesh and blood can not inherit the kingdom 
of God." (1 Cor.xv, 50.) "With what body 
do they come?" Not this literal body which 
goes into the grave, surely! Admitting it to 



OUR IMMORTAL FUTURE. 255 

be possible for the Almighty to give us this 
identical body (for with him all things are possi- 
ble), yet is it probable? Do the Scriptures bear 
us out in the belief of a literal bodily resurrec- 
tion? If this literal body is to come forth, then 
the thousands of deformities are to be perpet- 
uated in heaven through all eternity, else in 
those cases a special miracle must interpose to 
abolish literal deformities. If the literal body, 
which goes into the grave, is to rise, then all 
these bodily organs must be in heaven. But 
these bodies are composed of blood and bone 
and muscle ; oxygen, hydrogen, lime, and iron 
enter into the formation of this body. Are 
they to be made immortal? It can not be that 
pure spiritual beings are to be materialized in 
this way. 

How, then, are we to understand the ques- 
tion of the resurrection? I will illustrate my 
meaning, hoping rather to confirm the reader's 
belief in the doctrine than to drive him away 
by enforcing belief in a dogma, against the 
sober convictions of reason and the plain teach- 
ings of Scripture. Let us not put up human 
judgment in the room of revelation, but let us 
properly interpret Scripture. I hold in my 
hand, for example, a piece of crude carbon, in 
the form of common charcoal. It is a black, 



256 INSIDE THE GATES. 

unsightly thing, which leaves a mark on what- 
ever it touches. I hold in my other hand a 
beautiful diamond, queen of the jewels, which 
gathers up the straggling rays of light into 
bouquets of radiant beauty. But what is the 
diamond? The carbon, changed, crystallized. 
Chemists have tried to manufacture diamonds 
out of charcoal, but no human science has so 
far been able to accomplish it. Still, there is a 
Power that can do the work. God can. We 
know he has done it ; every flashing diamond 
declares it. 

This human body, as it goes into the grave, 
is the crude carbon; the resurrection body is 
the lustrous diamond, resplendent with all the 
glory of heaven. There will be just such a 
resurrection, shall I say a crystallization? My 
child will have a body as much more beautiful 
than the body which was laid in the casket as 
the diamond is more beautiful than the charcoal. 
John, on the Island of Patmos, was permitted 
to see one of the glorified beings of heaven. 
Possibly it may have been Enoch or Elijah, who 
were translated bodily. His first impulse was 
to fall down and worship one so lovely and so 
God-like, but he was prevented from doing so. 
"See thou do it not," said the angel; "for I 
am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the 



OUR IMMORTAL FUTURE. 257 

prophets, and of them which keep the sayings 
of this book. Worship God." 

All this, you say, looks quite reasonable, but 
does the Scripture allow of this interpretation? 
Paul writes: "For we know that if our earthly 
house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have 
a building of God, an house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens ; for in this [body] 
we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon 
with our house which is from heaven : if so be 
that being clothed we shall not be found naked." 
What is meant by ' ' house not made with 
hands?" "house which is from heaven?" In 
death, I have before said, we have the birth into 
a new life. The grain, of necessity, must perish 
before the new stalk can come forth. "There- 
fore that which thou sowest is not quickened 
[made alive], except it die: and that which thou 
sowest, thou sowest not that body which shall be, 
but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of 
some other grain: but God giveth it a body as 
it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own 
body." (1 Cor. xv, 36-38.) 

The body you sow is not the "body that 
shall be," says Paul. Standing by the lifeless 
form of my child I read: "Sown in dishonor, 
raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in 
power; sown a natural body, raised a spiritual 

17 



258 - INSIDE THE GATES. 

body." "For this corruptible must put on in- 
corruption, and this mortal must put on immor- 
tality. " "We shall not all sleep, but we shall 
all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling 
of an eye, at the last trump : for the trumpet 
shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incor- 
ruptible, and we shall all be changed." 

To carry my figure out fully, it may be 
proper for me to say that when a substance 
crystallizes every impurity is thrown off. A 
crystal always presents the substance of the 
matter crystallized absolutely pure. The new 
spiritual body, "the house which is from 
heaven," will be perfectly pure, free from all 
deformity; it will be a glorious body, a spiritual 
substance like unto Christ in his glorified state. 
"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and jt 
doth not yet appear what we shall be ; but we 
know that when he shall appear we shall be like 
him, for we shall see him as he is." And so I 
read: "As we have borne the image of the 
earthy, we shall also bear the image of the 
heavenly." 

Immortality! There is a deep inspiration in 
the thought. As from mountain-top to mount- 
ain-top beacon-fires have answered each other, 
and armies have been guided to victory, so in 
the victorious march of faith humanity has had 



OUR IMMORTAL FUTURE. 259 

its mountain-tops, where men have asked ques- 
tions concerning the future, and received their 
answers. On one of these I see Abraham of 
old offering up Isaac; and, as he was about to 
execute the decree that should send him' child- 
less through the world, with crushed hopes, his 
prophetic eye took in another mountain, sepa- 
rated farther in time than space, where another 
and grander offering bespoke the world's re- 
demption. Abraham saw the day of Christ, 
and was glad. Away yonder, in the dim and 
shadowy distance, I see Job, reeling beneath 
the strokes of an adverse providence, asking, 
"If a man die, shall he live again?" And 
across the valley of the centuries, from the 
mount of God, is borne the message of Jesus, 
the "first-fruits of them that slept," saying: 
''I am the resurrection, and the life: he that 
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall 
he live." (John xi, 25.) 

There may be mystery in all these things; 
but there is no disproof in mystery. We do 
not know as much as we shall know a thousand 
or a million years hence. What we do not 
understand now we shall understand some time, 
or some eternity. How and when this resurrec- 
tion, this "change," shall come, we need not 
know. Sufficient it is for us to say, Credo ; and 



260 INSIDE THE GATES. 

to every command of God that leads up to the 
higher and better life, Volo. "If any man will 
do His will, he shall know of the doctrines." 

Heaven. 

Turn now, dear reader, and let us consider 
somewhat of the future home of these immortal 
souls and bodies. If we are to live on, what 
shall be the nature of our residence? where 
shall be that eternal home? On one occasion 
the Savior said to his disciples: "In my Father's 
house are many mansions; if it were not so I 
would have told you. I go to prepare a place 
for you ; and if I go and prepare a place for 
you, I will come again and receive you unto 
myself, that where I am there ye may be also." 
This was said- to those disciples to cheer their 
drooping spirits; for they had left all to follow 
Jesus, who was himself so poor that "he had 
not where to lay his head." It was needful 
that they should have some promise on which 
to lean. They had left their homes, their 
friends, and their employments, and had taken 
up with a new kind of life, one which would 
involve deprivations, enmity, persecution, and 
even death itself. They were doubtless at this 
time a little homesick; they had that strange 
feeling of loneliness so common when one has 



OUR IMMORTAL FUTURE. 26 1 

removed to a new place, or is choosing a new 
mode of life. Just then, when they were so 
much needed, they received those comforting 
words from the lips of him whose fortunes they 
had made their own, and on whose strange 
words they hung. It was befitting that he who 
said, "Yet a little while, and the world seeth 
me no more," should also say, "I go to prepare 
a place for you." 

And what, I ask, do we all need in this life 
of uncertainties, trials, and bereavements, more 
than some sweet whispering of the better land? 
We can endure much when we are assured that 
there will be an end of suffering, and that the 
gloaming of the morning will give place to the 
brightness of full-orbed dav. 

What a cheerless existence ours would be, 
did no light shine out upon us from the invisible 
world. In the language of Bowring: 

" If all our hopes and all our fears 

Were prisoned in life's narrow bound , 
If, travelers through this vale of tears, 

We saw no better world beyond; 
O what could check the rising sigh ? 

What earthly thing could pleasure give? 
O who would venture then to die? 

O who could then endure to live?" 

As I have said before, there is implanted in 
our being that thought or sentiment which 



262 INSIDE THE GATES. 

points to the hereafter. Go and read up the 
history of the human race from the beginning 
of time,, and you will be impressed with the 
uniform testimony which all human records, 
whether carved in stone or traced on parch- 
ment, bear to this settled conviction of the 
human heart. The monuments man has built, 
the tombs he has sacredly guarded, the temples 
where he has worshiped, all tell the same story. 
The human soul lives in constant expectation 
of a future life. In catacombs and in pyramids, 
kings and princes, clad in regal attire, though 
dead, sit in solemn state, waiting these scores 
of buried centuries to resume the scepters of 
their former sovereignty. 

In some countries it has been the custom to 
burn the dead; but it was believed that fire 
would serve as a purifier to refine the soul, and 
that on wavering flame, made brilliant with 
colors imparted by wine and fragrant with in- 
cense, the ethereal particles alone were borne to 
heaven. And so strong has been this belief 
concerning the future that, through all antiquity, 
they buried with the dead those things that 
delighted them most on earth.- Rings still be- 
deck the blackened fingers of buried Egyptian 
beauties, and the cold hand of the Greek still 
grasps the obolus, wherewith to reward the 



OUR IMMORTAL FUTURE. 263 

grim ferryman for his passage over Acheron. 
The Indian warrior sleeps close beside the 
bones of his steed; his bow and quiver are in 
readiness for the "happy hunting-grounds of 
eternity." 

But not only has there been in the mind of 
mankind this general idea of a future state, but 
there has always been coupled with it the belief 
of rewards and punishments. In the writings 
of heathen poets there are descriptions of the 
abodes of the departed. Homer wrote of 
Elysian Fields, which lay far to the westward, 
on the distant margins of the earth. In subse- 
quent times these abodes were located below 
the earth, and were described as a place blessed 
with perpetual Spring, verdant and lovely, where 
flowers bloomed in beauty, where groves cast 
cooling shadows, and sparkling waters flowed to 
quench the thirst. There in perfect bliss dwelt 
the virtuous — there was to be found the true 
tranquillity. When we sing, 

" There I shall bathe ray weary soul 
In seas of heavenly rest, 
And not a wave of trouble roll 
Across my peaceful breast," 

we but express a sentiment which belongs to 
our whole race. AYe have heaven and hell in 
our Christian theology, answering to Elysium 



264 INSIDE THE GATES. 

and Tartarus in the old mythologies of the 
pagan world. 

And now, dear reader, we are nearing the 
end of this book, we are soon to part. You 
and I have dear friends who have gone away to 
the spirit-land. We have stood side by side, 
where our loved ones sleep, and we have 
thought of the heaven to which they have 
gone, and queried about it, and at times have 
longed for the happy greetings that await us on 
the other shore. But where is heaven? What 
constitutes its joys? Who are its inhabitants? 
Is it a state merely, or a veritable place? Is it 
around us, or is it away in some distant portion 
of space? Shall I be there? Shall I meet my 
precious children there ? Are our fathers, 
mothers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, 
friends, there, inside the gates of glory? These 
are questions that spring up in the mind of all 
who have been bereft, and who has not? It 
seems almost strange that our Heavenly Father 
has not told us plainly where heaven is. No- 
where in the Scriptures is it distinctly stated. 
We can only conjecture, and that we may do. 
Jesus said he came down from heaven; when 
he ascended he went "up into heaven." He 
said, "I go to prepare a place for you." Paul 
was in some mysterious way taken up into 



OUR IMMORTAL FUTURE. 265 

heaven. John, on Patmos, caught glimpses of 
the great city, and the throne and throng. But 
just where it is not one of all the writers of 
Scripture has told us. 

It may be asked, then, in view of this notice- 
able silence, is it proper for us to seek this 
knowledge? I answer, It is right for us to 
know any thing we can know. But our Savior 
is far more concerned about our readiness for 
heaven than about our knowledge of its locality. 
The one is essential; the other is not. Heaven's 
gate will surety open wide to every purified soul 
at death. Purity is the only passport to the 
joys of heaven. 

But what do the Scriptures say about the 
abodes of the saved? Let us bear in mind that 
the joys of heaven are spiritual. The life of a 
soul in heaven is a spiritual life, and hence 
heaven must be a spiritual abode. Possibly the 
reason why no one of the inspired writers has 
given us positive information concerning it is 
because of a natural impossibility to do so. To 
our minds, in our present state, it would be impos- 
sible to convey accurately the true idea. Hence, 
no attempt has been made, save in the gorgeous 
imagery of Oriental diction. The Bible speaks 
to us of the abodes of the saved, and in imag- 
ination we form varied and beautiful pictures. 



266 INSIDE THE GATES. 

We get our first ideas of it by comparison. St.. 
Paul says: "For I reckon that the sufferings of 
this present time are not worthy to be com- 
pared with the glory which shall be revealed in 
us; for the earnest expectation of the creature 
waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of 
God, . . . because the creature itself also 
shall be delivered from the bondage of corrup- 
tion into the glorious liberty of the sons of 
God." And then, again, "For our light afflic- 
tion, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a 
far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." 
In these and similar passages the life to come is 
portrayed in a way which indicates its superior 
glory. No wonder that Paul said he "saw and 
heard things which it was not lawful to utter." 
Heaven is called a "life." "Strait is the gate 
and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life." 
It is called "eternal life." "What good thing 
shall I do that I may inherit eternal life." It is 
spoken of as "glory," and "glory of God." 
"To them who by patient continuance in well- 
doing seek for glory and honor and immor- 
tality." "By whom also we have access by 
faith into this grace, wherein we stand and 
rejoice in hope of the glory of God." 

The word heaven is of Anglo-Saxon origin, 
and means to be lifted up, or raised in some 



OUR IMMORTAL FUTURE. 267 

way. Hence the common expression, "Up to 
heaven." But we know that the words up and 
down are relative terms. They who go up on 
one side of the globe go down with reference to 
the other side. The Jews believed in three 
heavens: first, the region of the atmosphere; 
next, the regions of the planets; while their 
"third heavens" lay still beyond. But the 
Jews had no correct idea of space, and hence 
these divisions partook of the poetry which runs 
through all the Jewish writings. 

Heaven is sometimes called "Paradise," in 
allusion to Eden, the first dwelling-place of man. 
"This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." 
"To him that overcometh will I give to eat of 
the tree of life, which is in the midst of the 
Paradise of God." As the word Paradise refers 
to Eden, so the expression, "Inheritance of the 
saints," alludes for its origin to the "Promised 
Land." "There remaineth therefore a rest [in 
the spiritual "Promised Land"| to the people 
of God." It is enough for us to know that al- 
most every word which is used to express de- 
light, and every figure of speech that can be 
employed to convey to our minds the idea of 
bliss, is made to symbolize the Christian's home 
after death. But still no word or figure tells us 
directly where heaven is, whither our dear ones 



268 INSIDE THE GATES. 

have gone. We wait, and look, and hope; but 
by and by the curtain will rise, and we shall 
behold the land of glory. 

Notwithstanding this silence, however, I have 
thought we may infer something concerning it. 
In my speculations I conclude that the universe 
is God's house. The word "mansions" may 
relate to the stars, those diamonds that sparkle 
in the crown of night; or the word may signify 
ample room, spaciousness, grandeur, beauty. 
Our friends are not extinct ; they are somewhere. 
They have a residence, in fact; for Christ said, 
"I go to prepare a place for you." But where? 
Some have imagined a vast central orb, around 
which all these myriad worlds revolve in solemn 
procession; a center where God, the .Great 
Unseen, is, where "the pure in heart shall see 
God;" the holy of holies in this temple, which is 
greater and more glorious than Solomon's, — but 
there is no way to verify it. Others have supposed 
the sun, or some distant star, to be the place to 
which we are appointed after death. How all this 
may be we can 'not tell. One thing is certain. 
Heaven is, first of all, a state — a condition. No 
sin can enter there. Its inhabitants are holy. 
If they were not, it would not be heaven. It 
is a state of freedom from all the ills which 
affect us in this life. "God shall wipe away all 



OUR IMMORTAL FUTURE. 269 

tears from their eyes." The cheek will not 
grow pale with sickness. The step will not tire 
as we tread the fields of Paradise. Progress 
will be the word. Infinite worlds will be before 
us, to be visited, studied, known. Did you ever 
experience the peculiar thrill which arises from 
a new discovery, a new^ fresh, bright thought? 
It took sleep from your eyelids, and hunger 
from your body. So I imagine the outgoing 
soul will ever be thrilled, and the ages of 
eternity spent in exploring God's house and 
growing God-like. That will be true rest, true 
joy, true holiness. "There shall be no night 
there, and they need no candle, neither light of 
the sun, for the Lord God giveth light; and 
they shall reign for ever and ever." 

It seems to me a proper inference from the 
Scriptures that heaven means the "boundless 
universe of God," in which, somewhere, Christ's 
presence, like a glory-cloud, is more signally 
manifest. The universe has in it a holy of 
holies, where the Lord of glory dwells, where 
"the pure in heart see God." But the re- 
deemed soul is not confined; it enjoys the 
"liberty of the sons of God." Then, going 
up to heaven signifies becoming invisible, and 
"coming down from heaven" means becoming 
visible. 



270 INSIDE THE GATES. 

In the twenty-first chapter of Revelation John 
gives us a beautiful description of the celestial 
city: "And the city lieth foursquare, and the 
length is as large as the breadth, and he meas- 
ured the city with the reed, twelve thousand 
furlongs. . The length and the breadth and the 
height of it are equal. And he measured the 
wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four 
cubits, according to the measure of a man, that 
is, of the angel. And the building of the wall 
of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, 
like unto clear glass. And the foundations of 
the wall of the city were garnished with all 
manner of precious stones. The first foundation 
was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a 
chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald; the fifth, 
sardonyx ; the sixth, sardius ; the seventh, 
chrysolite ; the eighth, beryl ; the ninth, a topaz ; 
the tenth, a chrysoprasus ; the eleventh, a ja- 
cinth ; the twelfth, an amethyst. And the 
twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several 
gate was of one pearl; and the street of the 
city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. 
And I saw no temple therein ; for the Lord God 
Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. " 

But this is figurative, and the whole descrip-' 
tion is in language which conveys to us the 
highest conceptions of grandeur and beauty. 



OUR IMMORTAL FUTURE. 27 1 

When Jesus was on the earth he spoke of him- 
self as the "Son of man, which is in heaven." 
He stood at that moment in a twofold relation. 
He touched at each instant of his world-life two 
distinct and separate planes of being. As a man 
he stood related to time and to the earth, and 
as a God he touched the realm of the Infinite. 
He was on earth and in heaven at the same 
moment. Heaven and earth met in him, and 
should, in a sense, so meet in all of us. 

A beautiful account is given to us in the sixth 
chapter of Second Kings. Elisha, the prophet, 
was pursued by a detachment of the army of 
the Assyrian King to Dothan, where he was 
completely hemmed in. His servant was terror- 
stricken. But when Elisha looked out of his 
tent-door and beheld the array he exclaimed, 
"Fear not, for they that are with us are more 
than they that are with them." And then he 
prayed that the eyes of his servant might be 
opened, that he might be able to see spiritually. 
The prayer was answered, and the servant 
looked up, and, lo ! the mountain flamed with a 
shining host, "full of horses and chariots of 
fire round about Elisha." The prophet was 
pursued by an army arrayed for his destruc- 
tion — one lone man more than a match for the 
Assyrian host! "Man's extremity is God's 



272 INSIDE THE GATES. 

opportunity." God revealed himself in symbols 
of protecting power. O, this is a precious 
thought. The heavenly world is near us. Our 
dear friends may be around us. "The angel 
of the Lord encampeth round about them that 
fear him, and delivereth them." "Are they not 
all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for 
them who shall be the* heirs of salvation ?" 
Admitting that the heaven of the saints is 
millions of miles away in space, yet distance 
means nothing to a spirit, and so heaven is 
"nigh at hand, and not afar off." I love the 
old Christianity which taught us about these 
celestial ministries. The poets have put it into 
their sacred hymns centuries ago, and we sing : 

" There are angels hovering round." 

Watts wrote: 

" I lay my body down to sleep ; 

Peace is the pillow for my head ; 
While well-appointed angels keep 

Their watchful stations round my bed." 

And Toplady: 

" Thy ministering spirits descend, 

To watch while the saints are asleep; 
By day and by night they attend, 
The heirs of salvation to keep." 

And so on. I. might quote at great length from 
the Wesleys, and all the old sacred poets. 



OUR IMMORTAL FUTURE. 273 

The world has heard much of spiritual visit- 
ants in all ages. Jesus said one day, when his 
disciples were alarmed about his personal safety, 
that if he willed he could summon to his aid 
"twelve legions of angels." The beck of his 
hand would have covered Olivet or Moriah with 
an angelic host. St. Stephen, the protomartyr, 
while yet in the body, looked up, and saw 
heaven open, and Jesus sitting on the right- 
hand of the throne of God. That is, he was in 
the place of highest honor. And yet, because 
fanatical people have carried this old Bible 
belief to illogical extremes, and have deluded 
the simple-minded with all sorts of vagaries in 
the form of spiritism, we have almost come to 
be disbelievers in these angelic ministries. 
Could we open our eyes at any time, could we 
see as w T e yet shall see, with pure spiritual 
vision, we should behold the " great company." 
Our eyes would be greeted with the faces of 
our dear ones, as they appear in their glorified 
state. Could we but hear as we yet shall hear, 
their songs w T ould make us glad. Could we but 
know now as we will know by and by, death 
would not be the dreadful thing which it seems 
to be to so many. 

There is not one whose eye rests upon this 
page who has not some dear friend in the 



274 INSIDE THE GATES. 

spirit-land. My children are there. Mother, 
your dear babe is there. Of their forms we 
know, and can know, nothing, positively noth- 
ing, only that they are not children in intelli- 
gence. The law of mind is to expand. They 
have grown tall in this direction. When we 
meet them in their glorified state, they will be 
able to lead us and teach us. They roam 
through fields of light and beauty, "forever 
with the Lord." How much of woe they have 
escaped! Not a night passes on this earth but 
some poor souls are shipwrecked, and on 
broken timbers they drift wildly about before 
the tempestuous winds and mad waves, the 
sport of the pitiless billows. Not a night 
passes but the poor, fever-burnt sufferer, or 
wasted consumptive, on whose cheek burns the 
hectic fire, with that unnatural redness, like 
that which "Autumn paints upon the perished 
leaf," tosses about in weariness and in weak- 
ness, waiting and watching for the morning. 
Not a night passes but many are hurrying 
through miles of space and darkness, to see 
once more the faces of their beloved friends ere 
death snaps the silver thread. ■ Never a day 
goes by but on the streets of the great city 
wander the poor, homeless ones of earth, often 
hungry and cold, uncheered by word or look, 



OUR IMMORTAL FUTURE. 275 

or grasp of friendly hand. From all these' tur- 
moils, sickness and poverty, pain and death, 
they, our dear ones, are safe. 

I think there is a spiritual universe within 
the material, just as we have spiritual natures 
within our bodily forms. We see the body; 
but the soul or spirit is invisible. We see the 
material universe; but we see not the spiritual. 
"While we look not at the things which 
are seen, but at the things which are not 
seen ; for the things which are seen are tem- 
poral, but the things which are not seen are 
eternal." (2 Cor. iv, 18.) To the pure, at 
death, heaven opens; visions of beauty burst 
on the eye; sounds seraphic fall on the ear. 
The throne, the river, the tree of life, may be 
symbols; but they must, they do, symbolize 
something. The reality is greater than the 
figure. God is not mocking us. We are not 
lured on by these intuitions and pictures to 
nonentity. Life, which is so rich in thought 
and feeling, will not go out in an eternal sleep. 

May we all "come unto Mount Zion, and 
unto the city of the living God, the heavenly 
Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of 
angels : to the general assembly and Church 
of the first-born, which are written in heaven ; 
and to God, the Judge of all; and to the spirits 



276 



INSIDE THE GATES. 



of just men made perfect; and to Jesus, the 
Mediator of the new covenant; and to the 
blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things 
than the blood of Abel;" and thus all be safe 
"Inside the Gates!" 




t\°[oio 



